Last night I pre-ordered The Secret World from Amazon. I have early access as well as a some in game goodies like a dog and some sort of XP boost. Oddly, I am not sure I'll be playing it at all this weekend apart from to logging in to save some character names. I've been traveling/ entertaining for most of the past week and feel more inclined to catch up in DDO and SWTOR than to jump into something new this weekend. I'll likely spend more time with TSW over the 4th of July weekend, and I am looking forward to it.
The game really impressed me during the beta weekends (Rowan has a great preview up that summarizes my experience pretty well). I like the story driven gameplay, the atmosphere and setting, and the classless character development system. I also think that, much like LoTRO back in the day, a lot of the players that try TSW are not going to "get it." The game requires real patience to get into. For example, the quests. Each quest that you take opens up a chain of quests that together form a narrative. The best way to do quests is to take one quest at a time and see it all the way through to the end. Most of the time when you finish one quest chain, if you explore the area where you end up you will find an object or NPC that will open up another quest chain.
The game is not catered towards completionists. It's not all that likely that you will even find all the quests the first time you go through a zone, much less do all of them. I have read estimates that you only need to do 25% of the quests in a given zone to be strong enough to head to the next one (my guess would be more like 50%, but certainly not all of them). The idea is that each character through a zone will experience a slightly to extremely different set of stories, and to encourage exploration.
Further, if you pick up a style of quest that you already have (e.g., an investigation quest), it will replace the previous quest of the same style in your quest log, though you can go back later and finish the original quest if you care to [corrected thanks to Rowan!]. In any case, If you try to play TSW like WoW where you pick up every quest in
sight and run randomly around the map to quest objectives, you absolutely will be stymied. On top of that, the puzzle quests can be quite challenging (and are meant to be). TSW is not a good game for those with MMO ADD.
The combat system and the character development system likewise need a real time investment before they start to shine. The emphasis of the game on narratives is also likely to turn off a lot of players, now that SWTOR has "proved" that compelling scripted narratives have no place in MMOs. This is an absurd contention in my mind, but a lot of commentators do seem to feel that way and have somehow managed to conclude that SWTOR settling at a mere 600-800K or so steady subs (my best guess, 1.3 million subs was the last number released) somehow supports this idea.
I don't expect TSW to set the MMO world on fire. However, I do think it will have very strong appeal for players that enjoy exploration, well developed narratives, and are looking for something outside of the fantasy / sci-fi genres.
I could imagine that people might to a bit of extra play in a zone than "necessary" in order to collect more skill points to invest in other weapon types.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of game growth I think get a fair amount of players initially, then have a drop like most MMOs nowdays and then possibly a slow growth from there, unless there will be some significnt issues with the game.
So far so good I think though. Played a bit tonight (Sente on Huldra) and enjoyed it quite a bit.
I agree that the game will follow the normal trend in all likelihood. Funcom seems to have also anticipated this, there are only four servers so far for NA. The few servers are crowded as hell currently, but long term that is way better than server merges.
DeleteOh yes, the game will take quite the getting used to for some. Not just the new interface and all that (my RMC guild lead and I spent a long time trying to figure out how to make a cabal or even just to talk in chat, LOL -- but bugs were also to blame for some of our troubles) but the entire play style is different.
ReplyDeleteI think patience is key. Definitely no more running from one place to another picking up quests and taking off without a second glance at the instructions. There will probably be people who will hit up the browser and straight up google solutions to some of the game puzzles, but then this game is probably not for them.
This game is really growing on me. I don't feel the pressure to experience everything or feel rushed, because the whole game is about taking your time to explore and think things out.
The game is growing on me as well. It almost plays like an adventure game (ala the old Sierra games or Myst). The things that rock about the game (imo) are not items I expect most WoW trained MMO tourists to pick up on or appreciate. You really need to take your time and look for details.
DeleteHaving spent most of my gaming time this weekend in the TSW headstart - much less time than a normal weekend due to RL things as well - I'm afraid that the answer will be 'a sufficiently large percentage of people who try TSW will not get it so that TSW gets labelled 'another Funcom fail'.
ReplyDeleteI say this because of the specific choices TSW has made that break current MMO genre traditions - such that players think, when something doesn't work as expected, that it's 'bugged'.
Some examples:
- points spent in your build are not resettable. Coming from games with some sort of build reset option - Rift being the most free game I can imagine in this respect - the fact that your Skill Points and Ability Points *cannot* be reset are causing players lots of issues.
- investigation quests are hard. They require not just attention to quest info, but also lateral thinking: chat was filled with 'quest x is bugged!' when I had already completed it (having tried in the beta, or read online how to do them :p ). One of the investigation quests is flaky, but the rest are just *difficult* - but players equate difficult = broken. :( I saw that with Rift's questing, and although I really like Rift, I'd never claim it's questing was 'difficult'; TSW has *diffuclt* quests - you HAVE to look things up on the internet (the game has a built-in browser); you HAVE to do things you'd never do in other MMOs.
You'd hope, in an idealistic kind of way, that players trying TSW would be open to it's way of doing things - but as Tobold's anti-review showed, that isn't the case.
So I'm afraid that players will judge it against standard MMO conventions (questing is trivial and signposted; everything is given to you on a plate; mistakes are fogiven; mobs in the world won't hit hard; etc), find that TSW doesn't meet these conventions, and then conclude 'Funcom failed again' rather than 'wow, I didn't expect that'.
I hate the term, but I do think "WoW tourists" are not going to dig TSW at all. If you are expecting a game that plays like WoW/ LoTRO/ Allod's Online/ ROM/ Rift/ SWTOR/ ect ... The Secret World is not it.
DeleteI like all of those games, not bagging on them. But TSW is an outlier in ways that aren't obvious when you first start playing. I am finding it to be a breath of fresh air. However, I also imagine a lot of players that cut their teeth on modern theme-park MMOs will get frustrated and give up before they see what the game has on offer.
A large crowd will not get it, and probably declare Funcom the biggest losers in the market. But I think that that won't really matter. A significant big enough group will get it. And they will make TSW and Funcom a niche success. Funcom is counting on that. They know they are not catering for the majority of the MMO players. But if TSW can get as much a cult status as The Longest Journey they will forever have a huge (enough) following to let them continue to make high quality games that are actually worth playing.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with you. It's not likely going to hit millions of subs, but I think TSW will get a devoted set of followers.
DeleteThank you so much for the link love. XD
ReplyDeleteJust a quick correction on your post, so people know: If you substitute one investigation quest for another (the red or pea-green ones), the first one will pause at the current tier of the quest (i.e., 3/5). You'll have to return to the original quest giver to pick it back up, but you'll be at the same tier. And it's available as soon as you'd like to pick it up again.
My pleasure :-) Thanks for the correction, fixed.
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