There has been no mention of Player Housing.

But Cabal (Guild) housing looks like it will have a strong part in the game. :)

Glad to hear Templar isn't about Christianity (or religion what so ever.) But I still think I'm more suited for Dragon.

Non-combat content and a strong ecconomy (and strong crafting presumably.) Woot!

Every word from Tornquest's mouth boosts my hype.

I love sandbox MMOGs and it looks like with Ragnar Tornquest at the helm, Funcom may very well make one of the best ever.

IMHO the WoW formula of 10 new levels and a new (completely balance changing) class and 10 more levels of boring same-old quests is the wrong way to go. I'm glad to see Funcom is being unique and more creative on their expansion. They've always been known for that.

If Templar in the game are not directly connected with the church, thats a good thing. It's the LAST thing I want in the game. (I'm not even in the 'bible belt' but I get inundated with all things Christianity on nearly a daily basis, it drives me up a wall.)

But still I don't think I can go Templar simply on philosophical differences. So in the end I think I am a Dragon through and through. I've always more agreed with the philosophies of the east more than the west anyway.

Such base hate on these forums, it's amazing.

I went dragon based on the test at Darkdaysarecoming.com. After doing more investigation and learning more of what they are all about, I'm still going to stick with dragon. Heres why.

Illuminati - Rich ignorant and bloodthirsty.

Templars - The 'good guys' but they are also a part of Christianity and thus their sect is the 'one true way.' To hell with them.

Dragon - The most secretive, mystically minded but also very mischevious.

I really do suggest people do thorough investigations into each faction before choosing, as clearly a good bunch of people have chosen Dragon cause.. it sounds cool and they like asian things. ;) Going to Darkdaysarecoming.com taking the test and then reading the details about each individual sect is a great start.

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Looks like AOC is on the right track....But the community the last time I played (wiccanna PVE) was just terrible.  It's sad that M for mature dosen't mean what it should.

Really? If by 'community' you mean the 2 dozen a-holes on Global every evening acting like dicks, thats not really Wiccana's community. I play on Wiccana regularly and it has a wonderful community (if you turn Global off ;).) Its guilds are very active and constructive, the newbie channel is full of people wanting to help new players out. There are regular RP events going on weekly on the server. It's generally one of the most friendly servers in the game.

It's skill-based sandbox with some a bit of themepark thrown in. Advancement is totally skill based and revolves around the faction you join and advancement through the tiers of your faction.

There aren't a lot of details as of yet but I suggest you check out Darkdaysarecoming.com and crygaia.com :)

Also check out some popular gaming websites for interviews and writeups released today. IGN, eurogamer, rock, paper, shotgun, etc.

To start I'd like to tell folks the difference between instances and zones as to many people seem to either have them confused or simply don't know the difference. If you know the difference, skip the next paragraph. ;)

Zones are enclosed spaces in a game that require loading to cross. Most single player games, especially shooters, are zoned. You complete an area and then load to the next. That is a zone. In MMOGs the popular thing is to do an open world and this has various benefits and detriments but that isn't the focus of this thread. An Instance on the other hand is a copy of an area, from a zone to a quest location. These require loading and are often dungeons that only you or your group participate in. As well many modern MMOGs instance their zones. Champions Online does such, when you enter a new zone you choose the instance to join. Each instance can only hold so many people before a new instance is formed to hold more.

Ok now thats out of the way, on to the topic of the thread;

A lot of people are worried it appears that TSW will be heavily instanced. Personally I don't mind instancing if it's done right. But a lot of folks absolutely hate it, whether it's a team instance dungeon or instanced areas ala the example above. One of the bigger reasons people worry about this in TSW is because the game uses an updated version of the Age of Conan engine (which is the massively overhauled Anarchy Online engine) and AoC uses both zone instancing and personal instancing.

Let me just say, stay thy fears people. :) In an interview on ZAM.com, Funcoms Creative Director and lead of The Secret World, Ragnar Tornquest, states how much he dislikes instancing and plans to use it only sparingly in TSW. :)

"ZAM: Based on some of the gameplay footage, it looked like you could go into this modern day world. Since this is based on our Earth, you've got to have some game zones. Will there be zoning? Instancing? How big is the game world going to be, and how open is it going to be, versus how instanced?

Ragnar: I'm not a fan of instancing at all. That really sort of bugs me all the time, but some people don't care at all. We're going to avoid instances as much as possible. Instancing is something that you sometimes have to do to protect newbies - especially at launch. Our playfields are very large. We want to avoid loading screens. For example, going from London to New England isn't going to be like clicking a map and seeing a red dot go from one place to another, that's not what it's going to be like. It's going to be seamless. There's going to be very little loading, and hopefully it's going to be instantaneous. We want you to be able to move in a way that fits the mythology of the game, that actually makes sense. It's not going to be like "what the hell? Why am I in New England right now? I was just in London!" It's going to actually make sense. I can't explain why it's going to make sense, but it will make sense. There might be some instancing. We're going to have instances and places like dungeons, or something we'll call dungeons, and those will be more team based experiences. Those will be instanced. The open world stuff we're going to try to avoid instancing as much as possible. We want to make sure that you feel like you're in a living, open world, and you're traveling around that and exploring it. Like I said, our playing fields are large and they are epic and it's going to feel that way, yet you're going to be able to travel seamlessly. Lots of promises, but we'll see. I just don't like instancing, so we'll try to avoid those."

So good news for the 'I hate instancing' crowd. :)

Oh, the entire interview can be found here;

www.zam.com/story.html

Instancing and Zoning are not the same thing.

Notes from a Funcom fan;

Game is being made by Ragnar Tornquest, guy behind The Longest Journey and its sequel. Funcom has fantastic and innovative ideas but they are a little slow on the 'releasing when it's ready not months before hand' deal ;) Now that the former lead Gaute Godager is gone, perhaps that will chang.e

Game will use zones but not like AoC, more like it's upcoming expansion or Anarchy Online. Zones connect directly and you can see across them instead of just a door in a mountain or talking to an NPC and 'poofing' ala base AoC.

Factions will be 'loose' factions not WoW like where your enemy is your enemy because.. the game says so. 'Oh theres an elf, I gotta kill him cause, well cause he's automatically my hated enemy.' Hurah for that.

Its a sandbox MMOG. YAY!

I am a fan of Funcoms games and have played all of them (some for years, I'm a current AoC subscriber and that game has come a long way.) Funcom makes absolutely fantastic, innovative and genre changing MMOGs. If they can release this sucker when its done and not get over their head with ambition and thus promise features they cant possibly deliver on.. I think this game could be a huge success.

No there are limits, MC isn't as big as it looks, though it is good sized. For example theres a tun of area thats across the river, but you cant cross the river.

The game has 5 zones and each zone is probably a mile square.

To the author;

WoW much? Damn the way you wrote this it sounds like your only MMOG expansion experience is WoW, with lines like'

'Most paid expansions run with either a new class or a raised level cap. How do you justify charging players for this one?'...

you sound like a WoW fanboi. WoW expansions suck. Another 10 levels, another new race, 2 new powers powers per class, a new tier of talents that will yet again completely fubar the games balance and result in months of fixes, not to mention such issues with entirely new classes (or class diversification,) and a group of new zones that have the same boring fetch/kill/fedex quests.

Give me a break, WotLK sucked after you hit cap, and that took all of 4-7 days for 90% of players. Of everyone I know that played WoW when WotLK came out, NONE play the game anymore. Almost every single one of them quit within weeks of the expansion hitting. To the point that it is so clear a large portion of WoW players thought WotLK sucked that the next expansion is radically different from the first two.

What AoC is doing is the best way to build an expansion. Add tons of new content at a variety of levels, give plays a 'post-cap' way to advance and farther customize their character. A lot of you folks talking about how bad the game is after the tutorial island (Tortage) clearly haven't played since the first few months. The last thing the game needs right now are 10 more levels and some new classes.

Jairoe03 has it right.
"Despite me not having played AoC as of yet and just purely reading the article for what it is. I still think AoC is doing something right that WoW never does is to NOT increase the level cap... I think AoC is taking the high road in regards to adding other ways to developing the character and providing new experiences as opposed to WoW who just repeat the cycle of releasing higher and higher tiers of equipment along with more and more 10-25 man raids. They provide very little in experience and diversity at the end of the game (in terms of PvE since this is generally their stronge suit) and the only real rewards come from the 10-25 man raids that do not cater to casual gamers well."

The last thing AoC needs now is a WoW-styled expansion of layering new levels on top of one another with the same old boring arse advancement systems that take most players days to get through and yet more boring raids.

Yea I gave up on crafting a while ago and probably should have mentioned such. Comparing it to TR was a bit harsh :p

As to the dynamic quests with NPCs running up to you, those are a pretty recent inclusion in the game can be quite fun. I mentioned them in passing (as the dynamic content seen mostly in the city.)

I'm glad some folks got some use out of the review or consider it well done, even if they disagree with parts of it (or all of it for that matter.) I try. :)

Discr CoX is hardly my first MMOG, and not remotely my favorite.

My first was EQ, and it wasn't my favorite either.

I can understand you disagreeing with my review. But bashing me over said disagreement is uncalled for.

Originally posted by mmodanno

As most of the Beta testers will tell you, this game is a wreck.  This post is obviously a viral post from a CO employee.

 

'Nuff said.

NO it's by a new open tester who has only played the tutorial.

The game is FANTASTIC in those first 5 levels. It's only after a week or two and more extensive play that you realize it's not all it's cracked up to be and has some serious issues.

Thats a viable rebuttle on a few points Aganazar, as with crafting as I said I didn't get all that far into it because it was simply bad (mind the last time I got far was more than a month ago, and it was terribly buggy and unfinished.) All powers do something besides strait damage but that something is almost always a very minor secondary effect, compared to CoX were in most archetypes the powers do a huge variety of things.

I forgot F11 could be used to move the UI around lol. But even then it's pretty minor compared to how customizable most MMOG UI's are today.

As to getting so acclimated to CoX I forget it's faults, thats not true what so ever. I'm a fan of the game to be sure, but it absolutely has some faults, repetition not the last of which. It's why I always suggest that people treat the game as a cusual experience. But I have noticed that so much of what CO does is directly something that CoX players have asked for over the years, yet the game has so little of what made CoX great. The combat isn't remotely as involving (though perhaps more fun, at first.) The teaming leaves everything to be desired, and your right that a good part of the teaming issues is that content simply hasn't been 'tweaked' for it but it needs a LOT more than simply 'tweaking.'

And Xcalibur I put it in the 'bad catagory' not so much because it's a themepark MMOG, but because its so quest based the content is very repetitive, replay value drops and the quests are largely not heroic in the least. And as to CoX and it's office/warehouse, the mission layouts and styles get much more diverse with levels, though I agree it needs more diverse mission tilesets at various levels. I simply would rather have story-focused missions (even with the few tilesets at each level range) if the combat is fun, the teaming is great and the enemies are memorable.

Clearly not everyone is going to completely agree with my review, just like I don't agree with others. But its an honest and fairly unbiased review based on extensive testing experience. I hope it helps but by no means should anyone use it alone as a deciding factor on whether to give the game a shot or not.

Edited the OP for errors and more detail.

Thanks, I feel the game will do pretty good. I think the release should be quite solid and the number of bugs (especially game breakers) is pretty low. I hope people will like it really. :) I just wanted to write a review to give people some ideas of the good and the bad, the flaws and what CO does right. In hopes that they will know what to expect when they get there. The vast majority are gonna find the game super fun, at least for a while. :) I tried to stay as unbiased as I could, though I couldn't help but compare it to CoX in several areas. Considering for now the two games are the only direct competition, I felt it was needed.

First note that as a fan of CoX (City of Heroes/Villains) I will be making some direct comparisons between the two games. But don't think that my enjoyment of CoX means I have treated CO with distain or will have a biased view.  I treated it like a new MMOG and hoped it would find success and its players enjoy it. So without farther ado, heres the review.

Good:

Character Creation is deep. In ways it's better than CoX, in other ways its not.

Combat mechanics are solid and can be quite fun.

Graphics are solid, at least character graphics. Also you can turn off Cel-Shading if you dislike it.

Millenium City is large and with a solid bit of variety, with towering buildings in the center of the city, a business district, china-town, etc.

Lots of travel powers, some cooler than others. You get to choose two, the first at 5th level.

You can change the color of your powers.

The custom framework system of choosing your own powers from any set is sweet, but also has limitations (see below.)

The game is zone based but those zones are (mostly) quite massive.

Bad:

It has certainly earned it's 'Scrappers & Blasters Online' nickname (more on that later.)

The game is themepark game ala WoW. Works for some but insures repetitive content and quests that are simply not 'heroic'.

Remarkably few gameplay zones, though the each contain a lot of content.

Did you think CoH lacked depth at release? It had nothing on Champions Online.

The crafting is largely bland and in many cases, nearly useless.

The UI is substandard with little customization. The inventory and 'gear' system in particular is bad.

Teaming is needs a LOT of work.

The PvP seems completely pointless and is utterly unbalanced (though CoX PvP was never great either.)

Beta Testing was limited to 6 hours twice a week (with a handful of weekends in the last month or two). Most beta's that are 24/7 have issues that beta testers simply don't catch or don't crop up until release. With such a small amount of beta hours I suspect the issue will be even worse.

Review:

I got into CO beta in early march and have largely enjoyed the game, though I did get a bit of burnout in July and didn't play for about 3 weeks. I consider it a duty to put a game through its paces if I get selected for beta (and because of this, I get accepted often.) So I'm not one to go 'this game suxxors' people who think early beta = release candidate and never log on again. Over the course of those 5+ months of beta-testing the game changed by leaps and bounds. When I first got in, several aspects of the game needed some serious overhauls, and 99% of them have gotten it. One thing that has improved the most is the combat system. In a MMOG the combat needs to be fun. In a Superhero MMOG, it better be damn fun, and for the most part it is.

Powers works like thus; You start the game with two powers. You either choose a power set or create a customized one. IE if you pick the 'Fire' set you get the first two fire based powers. If you make a custom 'framework' you pick the two powers from any power set. You could pick the first power from Power Armor and your second from Munitions. It is entirely up to you. Even if you go with a predefined power set when you level up and can gain more powers, you aren't forced to go with that same set for your other powers. The only thing is that higher Tier powers require so many lower tier ones. For example say your Fire like the example above, you can get the most powerful Tier 2 powers once you have three powers from the Fire set. But if your a custom framework and want to get T2 powers, you need 5 'non endurance building' powers before they become available. In the end your character is truly 'yours' with a costume that is likely to be fairly unique and a wide variety of powers of your choice.

One issue is that you really only need 3 or 4 powers for the entire game. That first power you pick is your 'endurance builder and it's a toggle auto-attack. Hit 1 with a target selected and you start using the power repeatedly (you used to have to tap 1 repeatedly, which was a real pain.) Once you have enough endurance, you can use your second power, which uses that endurance. A recent change is that you start with high endurance so you don't 'always' have to hit that end-builder first thing but can start a fight with a big hit right off the bat. It's a minor change but helped a lot. The end' using powers work one of two ways. Some powers you can hold down to build up and as you use up endurance with the build up you do more damage. Others use a strait amount of endurance every time. You have those two powers for the first 5-6 levels (the tutorial) before you can gain more. Once you do you really only need those two, a passive defense power and either a shield power or an aoe/high damage power. YOu get far more by the time you hit the cap but people have tested going through the entire game with 3 powers and it is entirely possible, if boring.

So while the powers and combat have some cool possibilities it can be problematic. As well this makes teaming in the game very odd in that there isn't a single power set built for tanking, healing, or defending, or CC. There are CC, defensive, healing powers scattered around the power sets and a few have more than others. But it's not like CoX were you have your melee guys and your blasting guys but you also have your tanks, your buffers, your healers, your control guys. It makes teaming CoX some of the most fun in MMOGs because each player brings something different to the team, and makes team gameplay engaging and tactical. Anyone who has played CoX and teamed even at low levels knows what I mean. In CO there is none of that. Because each character has their own power sets you never know who can do what. (As well 'examining players does not show their selected powers.) Most teams end up being made up of blasters and scrappers. There are no tanking power sets so you need to boost your Presence (one of the ability scores) and when you level up your powers, level them for drawing agro, though the problem is not all powers can do that. You never know who might tank because you never know who's built for it. Do you have a healer? Who knows. One person might have a healing power but it heals over time and is only usable every 30 seconds. What about CC? What about buffing? There is zero way to know any of this accept everyone listing their powers and how they leveled them up. Who has focused on the Strength power, who's got the highest presence. It makes teaming a MAJOR pain in the ass and the vast majority of players do not build with anything but blasting or scrapping in mind. Thus the nickname 'Blasters and Scrappers Online.'

What doesn't help as well is the fact that for the vast majority of combat, it's you and 1-2 monsters (3 or more and you can be in serious trouble, even with mobs your level or just above,) and you stand there and fire your powers while they stand there and use theirs, whether its punching or lobbing toxic waste. Few monsters are able to do things like knock you into the air and few player powers do anything but strait damage. A few powersets have more interesting affects, like an upercut power that knocks enemies in the air or shotgun that throws them back or ice cages, etc. It certainly isn't remotely as 'active' as CoX where your always throwing enemies around, taking over their mind, cutting them down, freezing them in place, making them attack each other, etc. Not to mention in CoX you rarely are fighting so few enemies, even at level 1. A large part of what makes the gameplay so 'eh' is that, even though the powers are cool, the enemies are largely simply not memorable. The zombies, the thugs, the mafia guys, they seem too convoluted and have nothing of what made CoH enemies so memorable. Enemy groups that had their own taunts, their own abilities besides 'shoot and punch'. They had their own style, their own strategy and may have even worked together. I could tell you of hundreds cool events and missions I've done with the Tsoo, the Freaks, Crey, even Hellions and Skulls. But I cannot think of a single 'non-boss' group in 5 months of CO play that really was memorable. They all just flow together. They are more like generic WoW enemies that unless they were bosses seemed to all have the same 'feel' to fight against.

The combat gameplay isn't all bad. One aspect of combat that is better than CoX however, is the ability to pick up just about anything and throw it. Based on your strength you can pick up rocks, lamp posts, cars, and at high strength even busses and throw them at enemies. This is something a lot of folks wanted in CoX, which is part of my hypothisis on the game (see below).

So the combat can be enjoyable but also can get boring do to repetitiveness, teaming issues and more. Lets move on to the games content.

The game is a themepark game. So it bears some resemblance to the king of all themepark MMOGs, World of Warcraft. It is heavily quest based and while there is some dynamic content (largely in Millenium City) the vast majority of it is quest driven. You get quests from NPCs with a symbol over their head (which does include an exclamation mark.) The quests vary, some are relatively heroic but the vast majority are not. In the tutorial quests are typical themepark quests. Go get the laptop, find this guys travel tickets, with some like 'free citizens from rubble' or 'free citizens from aliens' are a bit more heroic. The game also has public quests ala WAR, though usually one per zone or so and most are pretty much the same as regular quests, simply area wide. After the tutorial (which is of course.. all about teaching you game mechanics,) quests vary on the zone you go to. But the quests are the same every time you take a player through said zone and with only a handful of zones in the entire game, once you've made two characters and maxed them you've seen every single ounce of content in the game. The quests are 99% typical 'kill x, gather x, fedex x' quests, though do to outcry on the forums, some more heroic style quests have been added, particularly at later levels. Still the game feels simply so generic because of this.

Now whether you'd prefer the WoW style quest based CO over CoX's repetitive missions is up to you. Personally I prefer missions that vary wildly between characters and since release CoX has added a great deal more variety, though some zones certainly have a themepark feel. But in the end I much prefer the sandbox style of game that CoX is.

The UI is fairly typical. You've got your character icon with his health and endurance under it, an enemy one across from it. You've got your map in the upper right corner (and like most new MMOGs it shows quest and NPC locations, and usually a large circle showing the location for each particular quests goals.) The chat system is.. ok. Nothing spectacular but it works. One real issue is inventory and gear space. The gear in the game is typical MMOG stuff. A 2d icon that if you move over it shows a generic description and what ever bonuses (almost all gear has strict stat bonuses, though some has clickable procs or other effects.) The big problem is you can never tell what gear goes were. Unlike most MMOGs were chest armor is clearly chest armor, a weapon is clearly a weapon, even if (like WoW) 50 different swords may use the exact same 2d icon. In CO the icon gives you zero idea of where it goes. Each player has 3 primary slots and 6 passive slots and in 5 months of beta I couldn't tell you what goes in what slot by reading an items description, accept sometimes for the primary slots. You find out where it goes by attempting to equip it, and the correct slot highlights. It's poorly designed and with icons that give zero hint at what the gear is. (A piece of chest armor might have a red icon with an alien head on it for example.) The inventory itself is small though it has like 10 'tabs' that don't do anything until you equip a bag (that is crafted) but most give 4-10 extra slots and I see zero reason to have all those tabs. On top of that they often over-lap the gear area.

Those with hopes of a lot of UI customization, I wouldn't expect any. Hell you cant even move the hotbars around and for the longest time you only had 7 powers lots (that includes 'shift' and 'T' keys, for block and travel power.) Though for powers you do have mulitple 'build' slots like Passive and Offensive that let give different bonuses and allow you to slow certain powers together, which is a pretty cool feature, but then again the UI for it is so bad that I would say 80% of players don't even take advantage of it.

I'll mention crafting but only in passing. It is largely of little use and pretty poorly designed in terms of interface, depth, etc. YOu have to get one of the three crafting disciplines because a crafted item is required for a final quest in one of two 'post tutorial' 'Hazard' zones. The crafting is comparable to Tabula Rasa crafting. You can craft the generic gear but it is rarely better than what drops off random mobs, though I haven't taken crafting very high so I cant say for sure, but form the forums it doesn't sound like it gets much better than the mid-range I've taken it to.

After all these months of testing and working hard to get it to the solid point it is now I have come to realize one thing. While the new guys at Cryptic certainly have the talent, the leaders behind this game didn't have a really solid vision of the game, or at least didn't follow that vision all to well. Frankly it's almost as if Roper and more so Jack Emmert (former lead of CoX), when they sat down to make this game, they thought of everything that CoX didn't have the players clamored for.

They thought;

'hey CoX players wanted to change the color of their powers.'

'They wanted more travel powers, like swinging and they want them earlier'

'They wanted the ability to pick up random items and use them as w

'They wanted more outdoor zones.'

'They want to get capes and wings earlier and cool 'glow fx' sooner.'

'They wanted to be able to pick any power no matter the set.'

... and so they did that, they took every aspect of CoX that players wanted changed or liked better and implemented them in CO. But in focusing so much on 'what CoX didn't or hasn't done' they completely forgot what makes CoX such a solid game in the first place, with a dedicated bunch of players. In some ways this game is what CoX could have been, but in most ways it takes what makes CoX good and throws it out the window.

IMHO if CoX was released today instead of 5+ years ago, with modern technologies, graphics and gameplay mechanics but the same in every other way, it would blow CO out of the water. As it stands it's older and the graphics aren't as good, the zones are fairly small and largely set in the city, but it's features, it's content, it's depth and it's replayability are bar none better than what CO offers at the moment.

My Rating, with out comparing it to other MMOGs is;

6.5/10 with potential.

In the end I'd like to say that I do hope Cryptic has some success with the game. For the most part the people that work there are talented and dedicated. Though I won't be buying the game I'm sure some will have fun with it, and it is VERY fun at first, until the 'wow this is new and cool' feeling goes away and the repetitive combat, poor teaming and shallow gameplay kick in.

Originally posted by Salvatoris

Great game... best PvP in any MMO on the market.  Also, the OP is a sad lonely troll. :)

I'd have to say you haven't played many MMOGs if you think WAR has the best PvP on the market.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

Originally posted by Fion

Wow you've got to be kidding me.. IGN 'grudge match' WoW vs WAR? Who are they kidding?

 

I haven't trusted 'official' review sights in the last few years, least of all this one. This entire website has gone to shit over the years, though the community has done most of the damage. If the MMORPG.com folks dislike what I am saying and want to remove me, by all means I'd be happy for it. I barely visit this website anymore dispite being one of the very early members here. So in the end, it's their bad.

In the end WAR is high on the 'best MMOG around' list on this website not because it's any good, but because thats what Mythic pays for. Typical.

Money talks. Beckett Massively Online Gamer has a full page add stating that Eurogamer says " It wont be long before Funcom has one of the best MMO's in the world". Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures. I know AOC has been working on the game but it would have to be quite better than it was a 6 months ago.

It already does have one of the best MMOGs in the world. It's called Anarchy Online. ;)

But yea AoC is well on its way and I personally think it's one of the best at the moment. Though best in the world and 'multi-million subscribers' are two very different things. ;)