In all honesty, it’s been hard for me to get into The Secret World. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been excited for the game since Funcom first announced it and began taking forum registrations (signed up day one!) and I’m a huge fan of Ragnar Tørnquist’s prior works, including Dreamfall and The Longest Journey.
Still, once I actually got my hands on the game, there was just something about it that I couldn’t put my finger on that ended up deflating my excitement. While I had access to the beta for months, I rarely felt the urge to actually login and play. I do know that one of the major issues for me was the extremely poor character creation options; I just couldn’t get into my character.
Fortunately, I recently figured out a look for my character that I’m mostly satisfied with and now that the game has launched, I’ve spent a bit of time with it and found a couple of things surprising.
5. MMORPG.com Community Reaction
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This isn’t about the game itself, but let’s just say the community here at MMORPG.com is a bit of a tough crowd. Being so close to your discussions on a day-to-day basis I found myself surprised with a lot of the positive reaction we’re seeing from readers here on the boards.
You guys, for the most part, seem to be enjoying the game and for reasons that got me more interested in putting in some real time myself.
4. Game Performance
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I recently found out that support for SLI (multiple graphics cards) wasn’t actually set up until the latest set of NVIDIA beta drivers were released. I’d been playing the game before that (including back in closed beta) and the game ran great at cranked settings. Let’s just say I was around for the launch of Age of Conan, and with a top of the line rig at the time of the game’s launch I wasn’t seeing anywhere near the level of consistently strong performance I’m seeing in Funcom’s latest MMO.
3. Variety in Outfits
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While character creation is poor, and this is almost painfully ironic, the breadth and quality of outfits to dress your ugly bastard up in are almost unmatched. There are simply tons of clothing options to pick and choose from in The Secret World, both in and out of the in-game cash shop.
Once Funcom expands on their character creation options (currently targeted for the end of August), The Secret World could possibly have some of the coolest looking characters on the MMO scene.
2. Combat…Not Too Bad!
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I’ve noticed some fairly significant improvements on the combat animations since playing in beta (especially with handguns!) and while combat seems to be one of the game’s weakest areas being pointed out by our community here, I’m finding that at least so far, it’s not too bad (Mouse 4 for your builder really helps!). There’s a good bit of depth there when considering the synergy of different weapons skills and the debuffs/buffs they bring to a situation.
1. Questing IS Fun!
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Most people are raving about the really cool quest design in The Secret World, namely the quests that involve some sort of puzzle, and I have to say, I really do agree. Meeting up with random players and collaboratively solving quest puzzles is a real blast.
A friend of mine completed the dreaded Morse code puzzle recently by installing a Morse code app on his phone and actually figuring the thing out himself. I don’t know if I’ll go that far – but I’m honestly surprised at the length Funcom has gone to ask players to stop and think about some of their tasks.
Were you pleasantly surprised by anything in The Secret World? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
