Initial Impressions (TSW)
With no NDA for the TSW Beta weekends I can happily discuss my experience of playing through the first few hours. I aim not to give any spoilers and will hopefully I’ll focus more on the mechanics/systems in the game and if this isn’t what you want to read about then I’d suggest you stop reading here.
Highlight 1
TSW has been promoting their no-level progression system and to be fair I always took this with a pinch of salt as this often translates into “we refuse to call them levels but the mechanics are the same”. However TSW have managed to pull it off in a rather successful way.
To sum up my play-style, I’m a lore whore, hovering up any story lines and quest arcs whenever possible but as I reminded during my recent playing of Swtor, this often results in you over-levelling can the foes you encounter are weaker and present no challenge.
With TSW I played my normal path and picked up quests as frequently as possible (there is a low capacity for quests) and it felt very natural that the location/game content still matched. Enemies were still hitting me just as hard, despite me having some new skills to use against them.
Hightlight 2
Quests give a quick indicator that tell you how many parts it comprises of, this feature is good for juggling long and short term missions, plus in the one area in use this weekend, quests originate from investigations and not just contacts, which at first I thought was gimmicky but it’s not over used (yet) and the quests are very varied.
Highlight 3
The game uses much phasing to delivery a good experience for the player, despite there being a high volume of players in the area I didn’t feel that my quests were impacted by this. Only once did I have to wait for a clicky to respawn and it was only between 5 and 10 seconds.
We’ll that’s my first post complete, nothing magic but certainly a good start to the game.
No more secrets
I don’t normally get caught up in events, ARs or other pre-game activities, however I’ve been drawn in by the Funcoms Secret War game. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who has been drawn in to the game despite the fact it authenticate via facebook has instantly put some people off, which is understandable. But at least it’s not using my Origin friend list of 3 as the source of my information.
The game has recently started it’s 3rd week with the battle currently raging over all of Africa, while the factions attempt to retain control of their base countries and states. The previous week was all about taking and holding the opposing factions territories, which saw the map a patchwork of red, green and blue.
I believe that I’ve only got one more rank to achieve in the War which is Secret Agent, I’m not sure how long the war is actually running but once I’ve achieved the top rung I think that’s in for me unless there is a hidden bonus levels or content I’m unaware of.
Those playing need to remember to link their Secret War account to their Funcom Secret World account otherwise how are you going to claim all those goodies. You can find the link to do this your original sign up email but Funcom also email you at certain milestones, with a helpful reminder included.
Once you have done that you can quickly view the items you have earnt from participating in the war, it looks as if you have been raiding the cash shop early.
Shhhhhhh!
Since it’s the MMO birthday period I wasn’t surprised to see two of the games I have been keeping an eye on are gearing up for release, these are Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World. I had the option to pre-order one of these titles this month and it took a bit of humming and ahhing before I came to my final decision.
Like many players I was over the moon about the news that Guild War 2 was a going to be a reality, I signed up to follow the updates and read up on the lore, backstory, enjoyed the Eye of the North content, that encouraging players to earn content for their Hall of Monuments.
I think my enthusiasm started to wane when they linked the Hall of Monuments to the GW2 reward calculator. Sadly I never got back that drive to for the game, which is a shame as many sources indicate that GW2 is a great experience. For now it will go into the “Pick it up later” pile.
So my money was given to FunCom for their new MMO The Secret World which is scheduled for launch on the 19th June. One of the biggest selling points for me was that it’s not a fantasy themed game and at this juncture in my gaming experience I seem to be shying away from that genre. I’ve been playing SW:ToR (post to follow) which has really handled the gun-play in a great way.
A nice move has been that if you pre-order TSW, play the beta weekend and then think you really wanted one of the pre-order “booster packs”, you can just upgrade your account with those packs rather that feeling that you missed out.
So aside from Pre-ordering TSW I have been also playing FunComs facebook driven Flash game called The Secret War, this allows players to earn small game unlocks such as clothing, xp boosters and other trinkets. Nothing game changing but certainly nice to show-offs at launch with the other people running around with the same items.
