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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
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.
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.
I think that's the whole point of this 'horizontal leveling' they're talking about - you'll be able to boot the game up after two years of it being out, with a new character, and still be of some use to your faction. You'll be able to pop in, do a quest, and then leave again. Of course, it would be bad form to start a quest with some buddies and then AFK just as it starts to get hard, but that's the whole point of an MMO - your actions affect real people.
You could well just be complaining about MMOs in general though, in which case I would suggest to you a path that didn't involve spending several years slogging through WoW. I used similar advice to great effect after realising that I don't like vinegar on chips - the problem wasn't the vinegar, it was that I kept eating the damn stuff. Although I didn't care enough to bicker about it with random people, or spend lots of time reading up on the best vinegar, or choose vinegar over stuff that I like more; I also didn't then go on food sites and bring up my dislike of vinegar whenever someone mentions it. Maybe the problem is that you got super-anal about something you didn't, in hindsight, give a monkey's uncle about?
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I couldn't agree with you more. Ragnar Tornquist has been saying he will finish the dreamfall saga with Dreamfall Chronicles for the past 3 years. Considering Dreamfall had a huge number of plot holes and a massive cliffhanger ending i consider it a bit unfair how long we will have to wait to find out what happens. Especially if it ends up being another 3+ years.
Did April really die when she was stabbed and fell into the water? Did Zoe really die when her mother, Helena, injected her with poison as she slept? Does that traitorous bitch Na'ane get what's coming to her? What happened to Crow?
I rather liked the ending of Dreamfall. That the game ended shortly after the girl's story was told underlined that despite everything that was going on, a little girl died... and it was her story that mattered.
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!"
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.