The Secret World

[eKo]

Look what I found to cut up zombies with ... vrrm, vrrm...

[eKo]

Some quests also take place in the dark, though they usually give you a hat with integrated flashlight for extra creepyness.

[eKo]

And eko, no idea how you get through that...make yourself reaaaalllly thin ?

Can't see it well in the picture, but there's a path trough it (ahead left), but that's rather easy to spot. The laserwires on the ground you have to jump over are sometimes easy to miss and then they go BOOM!

Their State of the Game update looks promising, but we'll have to wait if they can deliver those promises in a short timeframe. I do find it very reassuring they have loads of things planned for the game. I read somewhere they kept (or wanted to keep) the whole development team after launch, so the team is as big now post-launch as it was during development.

I'm still totally drawn in even though I'm going slowly, still haven't reached Egypt (mainly because I want to finish all the Blue Mountain quests first).

[Lasiien]

vrm vrm.... Cool !

Not yet reached Egypt ! You slowbie, bet Cern's beat you ! (buy a new pc???! it helpa wit da lag ! )

[Cernos]

Heh, yeah I'm a bit ahead. I'm about half way through Transylvania and have already capped my faction rank (13 is the current max). Only completed about 25% of my skill wheel though, but I'm happy with my current Shotgun/Hammer setup so I'm mostly filling in the other skills for outfits and possible playstyle variety. Trouble is, I'm finding the skill/action points much easier to gain than the gear to use them with. Would love to try some other weapons out, but quality weapons are rare in the late game.

Here's my Chronicles profile: http://chronicle.thesecretworld.com/character/Cernos

I've really enjoyed the game so far, the PVE is very challenging and fun and the storyline is great. The missions are nicely varied and you really have to think and explore. The mission items and clickables do glow yellow or red when you get close up to them, but often they can't be seen from distance and they can be deliberately hard to find and map only gives you vague pointers (and for the storyline mission often no map clues at all). There's no sparkly glow on mission items like in WoW. This is great, it makes you think and work stuff out old school style.

But I can see the end of the content road approaching. I'm not there yet and still have 10 steps of the story mission to complete, but I'll soon be in the last Transylvania zone and then it's a case of redoing missions if I want to carry on developing my character. But I can't see where the gear uprgrades are going to come from. I've no intention of doing much if any dungeon raiding and the PvP is a bit limited and repetitive currently. Mission token/badge rewards at endgame are mostly non existant (something they badly need to address) which leaves grinding out the mobs in the hope of drops to use, craft or trade (there's no active auction house yet). If it were a true sandbox MMO this wouldn't be a problem, but it isn't really (though not a theme park like WoW).

The future plans they've announced for the game do look interesting but they need to get a move on because more and more players are soon going to run out of road. They can't just keep adding mission and dungeon content, the game is crying out for some faction rivalry content which I hope they will add. It was very disappointing to reach maximum faction rank to find there wasn't even a special uniform, perk or mission to reward it, just a phone call. Lame.

I think I'll sub for another month after the inclusive one, as this will give a chance to see where they are taking the game and will also take me through to the launch of Guild Wars 2 nicely. Secret War is the sort of game I can see myself dipping back into for a month or two every now and then to see how it is developing.

Here's some screenies from Transylvania: