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An Early Look At Ragnar Tornquist's The Secret World
At the recent Penny Arcade Expo, Funcom revealed a ton of new information on The Secret World, an MMO being designed by Ragnar Tornquist that's aiming to buck several of the genre's common trends. Tornquist also spoke later about several of the game's features and some of the design philosophy that they're working with. The game does not have a traditional class or leveling system. Instead, players gather the powers they want to use and align themselves with various factions of their choosing. "We want you to feel part of a world where the conspiracies are so dense and the politics is so thick that, when you join the secret society as a novice at the very beginning, it's this vast organization, and you'll have no idea how it works initially." PvP will be largely segregated from PvE, and new players will be able to contribute in fights that involve more experienced players. Funcom released some concept art and in-game screenshots for The Secret World to go along with a new cinematic trailer.
The new fad is to buck the trend. Pretty simple formula really.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And though the secret society seems cool at first, like the family you never had, eventually the game will be encouraging you to blow yourself up in crowded video game stores while Tornquist is pursued by special forces among the caves of Afghanistan.
After slogging through World of Warcraft for several years, the last thing I want in a game is something that requires me to basically live a double life. I'd like an MMO where I could pop in and out, instead of dedicating multi-hour blocks that become the equivalent of a part-time job by the end of the week. And that doesn't include researching content for efficient strategies, researching in-game equipment for optimized tactics, bickering with people on the Internet about various aspects of gameplay, or ultimately regretting all the time I didn't spend socializing, reading books, accumulating income, learning a real-world employment skill, exercising, eating decently, or traveling.
It's funny, but every time I see stuff like "the politics is so thick" or "there are no levels" and a dozen other things new MMOs say are amazing and novel I keep mentally adding "... like EVE Online".
I swear to god, sometimes I think EVE is becoming the Lisp of the MMO world. Lisp/EVE did it first, Lisp/EVE did that much better, every language/MMO will eventually embed a hacked up, tacked on, bad emulation of Lisp/EVE.
ok, seriously - they had me intrigued, and then I see that the trailer is for the xbox version.
Every. Single. One. game concept that originated on PCs and was moved to consoles was dumbed down. Yes, Oblivion, I'm looking at you. Yes, Halo, I still hate you.
So, from what I could see, this isn't going to be an "MMO revolution". It's going to be counterstrike with better graphics and a persistent world, set in an alternate reality setting. An MMFPS. With console controls. I'm shivering, but it's not the anticipation.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Funcom. The Longest Journey was a single player game that was a lot of fun but overly wordy. Anarchy Online was an mmo and a disaster. So we shall see.
Can't he at least finish the Dreamfall saga before he starts mucking about in another genre!?
Meta will eat itself
Conan.
'nuf said.
We want you to feel part of a world where the conspiracies are so dense and the politics is so thick that, when you join the secret society as a novice at the very beginning, it's this vast organization, and you'll have no idea how it works initially.
That's a little bit too much like real life for comfort. But, like real life, I expect it will be crushingly dissapointing when you finally discover just how simplistic and facile most people's motivations actually are. The complexity of most human systems is essentially an illusion.
At this, Ragnar was pelted with beautifully designed Collector's edition sturdy metal tins before being smothered by hordes of fans carrying little leatherette maps of Hyboria.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
After the disaster that was Age of Conan I will not be folling a Funcom MMO for a looong time. If they manage to pull a quality product out of their ass then good for them, I'll try a 14 day trial at some point. No more waiting 2 years to be disappointed in a game that promises so much and delivers so very little.
...sounds good, plays like crap.
They fscked up Anarchy Online long before AoC -- 2 epic fails in a row!
Both launches where reported as: "the smoothest launch in MMO history!" - we know how smooth both went..
And their "Ideas" are not new, not at all.
Secret World has an interesting storyline, compelling music.... but wonder what the genesis of such a theme would be...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Well, in much the same way as the launching of the Vasa, the flagship of the Swedish crown that sank 120m from the shore after being launched. But the launch itself, as anyone present could attest, was as smooth as anyone could expect. It's only (immediately) after launch that the problems started ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sometimes you just know the wrong people are playing a game. Go play sonic, that should suit your attention span.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There is no real money to be made outside of Windows and console gaming.
I am a little sore that The Longest Journey is still shelved. If this MMO shares any elements, even the general feel of it, then I think it will be very interesting.
I still consider The Longest Journey to be the best adventure game and actually one of the better games I've played in general, if only in terms of story and world.
If you're curious about it, it's really cheap on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/6310/
oh wait, that one wasn't that good either
I am having trouble figuring out what they mean by new features? Other games seem to have these things they are mentioning.
I think we have all forgotten what the vision of an MMO is supposed to be. We need to drop all this leveling bs all together. It has been done to death, and quite frankly, who really wants to level up ANOTHER character. It also leads to all sorts of weird ass game design decisions and limitations so you don't have people getting one shot by monsters.
But I don't get it, where is the Massive Multiplayer part of MMO? Seriously, think about it, when is the last time you saw or played a game where 200+ people were in the same area doing the same thing? Why don't we see any games working on technology to bring more players together playing a game at the same time? More massive!
Is this all we have, at most 100 players doing the same thing at the same spot until we have more bandwith? Most games I have played that even come close to packing in around 100 players are laggy fuck fests that just remove all ounces of gameplay.
Secret world...blah, what is it going to have, go out and collect random skills that you can use, then participate in the same style MMO combat you've enjoyed since fucking merdian 59. Jesus christ can we get some innovation please?!?
Honestly, bliz and eq2 seeem to have the genera pretty much done right. Great, close the book on it, lets see something new, I have a fist full of cash I'm waiting to toss at somebody who make something new, give me a reason to spend it.