I'm currently playing (and loving) Secret World, so I'm a bit biased. I won't even attempt to list "my" top games because no one really cares what anonymous_gamer_#197621 thinks.

I will give a warning to people who play Neverwinter -- watch out for Cryptic and Perfect World. I played Star Trek Online for 3 years starting at launch. That game went from being a quaint, inept fun little niche game with a clueless game director (who even left to take another job, then returned "triumphantly" to lead the game again) to being a mindless grind oriented game with lots of cash grab "features" led by a dishonest, clueless game director (same guy, ironically) who pushed through changes that none of the player base wanted, then had to emergency patch to appease the angry masses coupled with a "humble" mea culpa dev blog post.

And if they haven't already implemented them, get ready for loot drop lock boxes that you must pay real life cash to open. These were the just about all of the "new content" that was released for better part of a year while the players begged for new storyline missions. The "content" part of the lock boxes? Super rare chance to get a premium star ship at about $1 RL per attempt (Keys to open the boxes and give you a lottery-odds chance at getting a ship cost about a buck a pop in the cash store).

Originally posted by dancingstar

Originally posted by redcapp
Seems like you'd be better off just buying $15 of bonus points each month.  The 10% discount doesn't make up for the fact that you're getting $5 less BPs with the sub.. am I missing something?

You're missing that (1) sub is only US$15 / month if you sub 1 month at a time -- see the post Ortwig linked and (2) in addition to the "bonus points" store credits, subscribers get 10 "veteran points" store credits per month which can be spent on items -- some of varying degrees of usefulness, some purely cosmetic -- that are not otherwise obtainable through the item shop. There is also a reusable XP booster (double XP from mob kills for 1 hour a day) and a cosmetic "item of the month" (those so far have been mostly hats or masks, though there was also one pet), but tbh I don't consider these last to be major selling points.

EDITED TO ADD: http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=66105 is the announcement for the veteran system. At the moment only some of the proposed items have actually been implemented.

Wasn't another perk of subscribing monthly or going lifetime, that the Issue DLC packs would never cost more points than your monthly bonus of 1200?

I really like TSW, it's innovative and a lot of fun. After EQ1 (4 years) and WoW (6.5 years) and a few shorter dalliances (Star Wars Galaxies for a year at the tail end of EQ1, Star Trek Online 3 years concurrently with WoW, short look-sees with Star Wars: The Old Republic and Tera), Secret World is unlike any of the games I've played (a good thing).

Granted, there are warts and pimples along the way, but I'm having fun playing the game, something I couldn't say for the latter stages of most/all of the games I mentioned playing. If Funcom can get the home-office-transition problems solved and get back to regular issue releases, I'll hang around and see where the game takes me.

I played WoW for 6.5 years, but Cataclysm ruined the game for me. About a year after Cat launch, I quit the game for good and migrated through a couple of other games that were very brief stops -- Star Wars the Old Republic for about 4-5 months, but that game bored me and just wasn't fun ; I continued a long flirtation with Star Trek Online until the Season 7 patch which caused me to cancel my sub to that game, once and for all ; I played Tera pre-f2p for about 3-4 months but it just lacked something -- it was more fun than TOR but just didn't capture my attention the way EQ1 and WoW (and SWG) did in the past.

I'm currently playing The Secret World and thoroughly enjoying the game, mainly because (1) It doesn't have elves/gnomes/dragons and other fantasy world tropes (2) it's set in a (more) realistic real world (3) It's a LOT of fun. The shaky launch and shaky down-sizing worries me, but I'll keep playing TSW because the dev team (Joel) seems to understand MMO players and has added some innovative concepts to a genre that has been burdened with so many me-too! clones in the last decade.

Originally posted by Chaserz

I am playing again after finding a very nice and flexible build so now I have a couple questions.

1.  Am I expected to complete the main mission quest line "Dawning of an Endless Night" before I would go to other zones?  I know it advised not to race through the main mission quests only but I have gotten tired of Kingsmouth.

2.  Where can I get upgraded quality level Assault Rifles?  Crafting my own or questing?

 

Thank you

Re: 1 - the story-line mission spans all of the areas of TSW and wasn't designed to (technically) be done at one time. Since it doesn't take up a main/side/dungeon mission slot, it can sit there as you progress through the areas and strengthen your character (trust me,  you'll need to do this). You'll notice that while completing the earlier tiers of the mission in the Kingsmouth area, that it will suddenly give you a tier that sends you to savage coast (to the Academy). After that, it sends you to the mines in Blue Mountain. Some of these jumps to other areas can be daunting if you haven't been upgrading your gear and build.

Re 2 - the first reply mentions Council of Venice vendors in the first few areas that sell gear for the "Sequins" you earn from missions -- this is a great way to pick up a new AR. One tip: the Savage Coast vendor which is almost to the Blue Mountain zone line at Red's Bait Shop sells QL5 weapons (and Glyphs) for the same price as the QL3 vendor in Kingsmouth. If you're strong enough to make the run across Savage Coast and have the SP points spent up to 5, that's a nice additional bump in weapon quality. Also: the vendor in Blue Mountain (at the Trailer Park) sells QL6 weapons and Glyphs, but I think they cost 10 more Sequins, 50 vs 40, and the trip up the coast road in Blue Mountain could be scary if you're not careful.

Has Cryptic / Perfect World added pay-to-open lock boxes to NW yet?

Having played Star Trek Online for just under three years (launch up to Season 7 debacle), that was one of the first things that was implemented after PW took over Cryptic -- looted boxes that were locked and required paying REAL cash in their store (roughly $1 US) to buy a key to open the box. They juiced the desire to open the boxes by putting ultra-rare ships in the box loot table, but never disclosed what the odds were of getting one. The rest of the loot table was utter crap.

People started selling the keys on the auction house for multiple millions of in game currency after buying them using the Dilithium crystal-for-Zen point exchange (Dilithium was yet another in game currency that you earned doing grindy things, Zen points were the in-game store currency that you usually bought with REAL LIFE currency).

Unless Perfect World has a hands off policy with NW, I foresee a repeat of the above money grabs.

For lazy boots, letter details the upcoming (no release date atm) Issue 7 which takes a decided James Bond flavor with the obvious creepy TSW undertones.

Issue 7 takes place in Transylvania and you investigate werewolves, the Orochi connection to the hairy brutes and get a new aux weapon, the Flamethrower!

http://www.thesecretworld.com/news/game_directors_letter_april_2013

In case you missed it, there was a free consumable available in the Secret World store, I'm guessing for April Fool's Day.

Go the the store, click on the "New Items" red button and it _should_ show up as the first item that costs 0 Funcom points. You get a stack of ten clickable consumables that put the above rainbow effect in your general vacinity, which lasts about 5-10 seconds.

Note: these were still available as of about 11am CST/USA April 2nd 2013, but I'm not sure how long they will remain in the store, still assuming it's a tie-in with April 1st, so check it out ASAP to make sure you get your stack of 10 clicky rainbows!

Edit: added time zone, central time - USA

They pushed a new three-piece outfit for female characters this week, called "Disunity". You get a short dress, asymmetrical gloves (one side has a wrist band) and some shiny black boots.

I uploaded a few screenshots on the main page, check them out. I'm including a couple samples here, one with the leggings from the "Dark Symmetry" outfit, and the other with the raggedy stockings from the "Rogue Mechanic" outfit. I did this to show how any leg items you equip with "Disunity" shows through underneath the hem of the dress, so you can get creative and make some interesting combos.

Dark Symmetry shorts/leggings:

Rogue Mechanic shorts/stockings:

Congrats!

Awesome screenshots!

I just uploaded a bunch to the screenshot area on the main page, including one of my Dragon lady cracking the whip while wearing three parts of the Indy suit.

Also included were shots of the Pharaoh Hound (Veteran monthly gift which was released right before Issue 6 went live) and the ARG Reward called "Route 666" an awesome multiple piece motorcycle outfit.

The new "Last Train to Cairo" Issue 6 update is awesome! Got my Indy fedora today and have already earned a cool Dragon PvP outfit via the new experience/Citation system. It lets you dress like you do during PvP battlegrounds anywhere in the game (and gives you enhanced buffs during the PvP games).

Check out the screenshots I uploaded on this site to see the Dragon PvP outfit, the Issue 6 T-Shirt you get for finishing the Issue 6 storyline achievement, and some other shots (mostly) from this update.

Originally posted by Cryseyde

Anyway, issue 6 is pretty damn amazing. I can't wait until I have the tokens to get the whole outfit. Which will be a while after I get one of those hat signets.

Definitely amazing. I got the fedora on Sunday and will have the shirt when I replay the side missions Monday.

One of the Dragon "deck" outfits looks similar to the Indy outfit, albeit it has some holsters strapped to your leg, but it has a brown jacket and khaki shirt and pants. I created a Valet "Indiana Jones" placeholder using this deck outfit and the Fedora.

The only Secret World related item on this site is a week old article about Joel's triple duty as AO/AoC/TSW fearless leader.

Yet, Thursday was the release of the impressive new DLC for Issue 1.6.

And Amazon if featuring a great download deal on the game with bonus points and (again) I see about it on Massively and in these forums, but it didn't garner a mention from anyone officialy connected with mmorpg.com?

In case you missed it:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/14/nab-a-discounted-secret-world-download-with-1200-bonus-points-on/

Now, I'm going to go play with my new bull whip aux weapon and start earning some tokens to buy myself pieces for an Indiana Jones style outfit to go with it.

It's a great deal.

If you're on the fence about the game, now's the time to get it cheap, get some bonus points to buy some of he DLC content which is truly amazing! 

The 1.5 Tyler Freeborn series was so well made and truly haunting, unlike anything you'll ever see in other AAA MMOs. And today, the early release of 1.6 "Last Train to Cairo" series comes real close to topping 1.5! The last mission is a LITERAL thrill ride, I won't spoil it, though. I finished it this afternoon and got my new bull whip aux weapon and started earning the new currency to buy an Indiana Jones style outfit for my character.

I saw this video linked on TSW official forums and it's incredible.

Funcom should hire this person and put them to work creating compelling promo videos for the game.

Originally posted by eric1000

Originally posted by cura
God no. TSW is one of the worst games i played.

This

Yet you guys are trolling a Secret World forum?

McDonalds is mentioned elsewhere in the GW2 is successful and great analogy, and I hate McDonalds, but you don't see me logging onto www.mcdonalds.com and ranting about how bad a Big Mac is.

You don't like the game, move along, this section is not for you.

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by Doogiehowser

I don't know why people bring Justin Bieber as an example everytime. It is not even a relevant example.

 

 

 

Its because clueless peple keep equating sales numbers/subscribers with quality.  Just because a game like GW2 has sold well, doesn't mean its awesome while just because a game like TSW hasn't sold well doesn't mean its awful.  I'm not saying GW2 is a bad game or TSW is flawless but remember all those times people compared WoW with MacDonalds?  The same annalogy applies here. 

Using the fanboy logic, GW2 is a drop in the bucket compared to World of Warcraft, and we all know how superior that game is.

Originally posted by Ortwig

Looking forward to it:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/13/the-secret-worlds-issue-6-launches-tomorrow/

Great news but sad that we have to get the news from another game site with nary a mention here on mmorpg.com other than a loyal fan's link to that other site.

Massively seems to have a few fans of Secret World on staff and has at least one (sometimes two) informative articles per week. Other than the posts on this forum (by fans) and the screenshots (by fans) you don't see many mentions of TSW on mmorpg.com.

I guess it's hard to fit it into the schedule with all the Elder Scrolls, GW2 and "Cameltoe Unchained" articles, hehe.

The wait is over. Just read on another "massively" sized gaming site that Issue 1.6 is being patched in later today, the 14th. Can't wait!