The Secret World Message Board older than one year ago

#thesecretworld Modern-day MMO The Secret World has a great deal going for it. The world is interesting, there are clear plans for regular content updates, and their new raid looks lovely. It even has a free trial now. But unfortunately, what it doesn't have going for it is subscribers. More »

As we know, random events segregate ‘non-randomly’, and things bunching together isn’t a trend. But it’s still pretty chilling to see so many lay-offs in the games industry all at once. So we express our sympathies and best wishes to those at Funcom, PopCap, and THQ who’ve found out their jobs are no longer in the last few hours.

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As a red-blooded member of the game-playing populace, I must confess that I quite enjoy rocket launchers. However, as someone who has blood and doesn’t particularly want to see it outside my body, I’m not the biggest fan of surgery. But then, I suppose that means The Secret World Issue Two is adding something for everyone. And honestly, aside from the part where the man performing it looks like he wants to take all your organs and replace them with giant centipedes, even the surgery will do the body good. Specifically, you can get a new face! Then you can use your new face to look at more hair customization options, new story missions, and two more nightmare mode dungeons.

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#thesecretworld Though The Secret World has gotten off to a stumbling start, Funcom continues to aggressively roll out fresh new content, like the August 28 release of Issue 2: Digging Deeper and the promised New York City raid, which in the next few months will give the city a real reason to never sleep. More »

The Secret World has one remaining secret – that it wasn’t the big fat hit it needed to be. Dev Funcom has been making grumbly noises about the Metacritic score being too low, leading to a tumble in their share price, reportedly by as much 84%. It’s almost as if Metacritic is a poisonously artificial benchmark of success and accomplishment, isn’t it? While I raise at least three eyebrows at Funcom claiming their aggregate review score is the major reason for the game struggling, the fact is that the game has failed to meet their sales projections, and that’s bad news for an MMO. Funcom’s chief money-dude has also been talking of lay-offs in the wake of the bad news.(more…)

The Secret World is now available on Steam!

Hidden within our own modern-day world is a secret world. A world where every myth, legend, and conspiracy theory is true. And now, dark forces are on the move and secrets that should have remained forever buried have finally been uncovered. The world is about to discover that the terrors that have plagued our nightmares are all very real.

Recruited to become agents for these secret societies, civilians are granted access to the true power embedded in their DNA. Finally capable of tapping into their full potential, these agents can now master any weapon, learn any power, and take on any role they want in the secret war and the battle against the rising darkness.

You have been chosen. Welcome to The Secret World.

#speakuponkotaku In today's magic missile-casting episode of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Kyle DeBona discusses how wonderful it is not to be frozen in one spot with a horrible monster bears down on you, desperately praying for the casting bar to finish. More »

#review As it turns out, I was born to be a Dragon. More »

I don’t imagine it’s easy being a subscription fee in this free-to-play world of ours. At best, you’re viewed as an anachronism. At worst, a pariah. You walk into places of commerce, only to find people talking about you as though you died years ago. And others… well, others aren’t so kind. They all-too-willingly bring out pitchforks and torches, which is among the more enthusiastic ways to communicate the message “Please go away.” I mean, just look at The Secret World. Funcom’s throwing a giant party next weekend, and TSW’s subscription fee isn’t even invited!

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To celebrate the fact that The Secret World has been out and online for a whole month, Funcom will be granting free access to anyone that wants it from 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, August 3 until 3 a.m. EDT on Monday, August 7. Players with left-over beta accounts should be able to log right in, but anyone else will need to create an account first and download the client.

In-game fireworks will also be handed out to everyone playing, up to fifteen per character, until the end of the weekend. Additionally, solving 30 missions between August 3 and 7 grants your character a special shirt and 1200 bonus points. There will also be a special leaderboard during the celebration, which displays the names of the top-100 mission solvers.

Welcome to Postcards from The Secret World, a trip through Funcom's new title from the perspective of a player new to MMOs. Read parts one and two if you haven't! As I've written before, nearly everything about The Secret World has appealed to me since it was announced. That said, the least appealing aspect was always the fact that it was a massively multiplayer game. As a fan of horror and games like Alan Wake and Silent Hill, The Secret World struck the right chord. The fact that it was an MMO was an afterthought.

I don't play a ton of multiplayer games and, when I do, it tends to be with a close group of friends, so saddling up with strangers isn't a terribly exciting prospect. But The Secret World is an MMO, after all, so this week I was determined to do exactly that. After seriously typing the letters "lfg" for the first time in my life, I delved into a dungeon with four other people. I'll admit I was nervous and died during one of the boss fights. In my defense, I was distracted by taking screenshots for this very article. Dumb, I know.

It was okay though, because after that ... we fought Cthulhu.

#thesecretworld With Kate on holiday this week's MMO log for The Secret World isn't happening. This is sad. Luckily for everyone involved, I've been playing as well, and I am tired of people asking me what character class I rolled. That's not how it works. Here's how it does. More »

Welcome to Postcards from The Secret World, a trip through Funcom's new title from the perspective of a player new to MMOs. Read part one if you haven't! My character stands outside a locked cell in the Kingsmouth sheriff's office, there to uncover the secrets behind a 2002 murder case. All I know is that something vital to the case's mystery is inside that cell. The cell, as it happens, belonged to Larry Checkon, the man allegedly responsible for a string of summer murders - at least it did when he was alive.

My only clue was discovered inside the sheriff's computer, where I found a record of Checkon's actions after he was arrested. The sheriff had questioned him at the time, but Checkon kept quiet, telling the sheriff that she'd have to talk to his ghost if she wanted the truth. Somehow, this information is supposed to get me inside the cell and get me what I need.

The really weird part is that this isn't an adventure game, but rather an MMO: Funcom's The Secret World. It's this investigation mission - and others like it - that is fast becoming my new obsession.

#thesecretworld Reader Daniel, who's playing MMO The Secret World, made these panorama screenshots and asked if we thought they looked interesting. More »

#thesecretworld There are times, when playing a game, that the hours just sail past. The player becomes completely immersed in the content and time loses all meaning, buried in a haze of "just one more quest." More »

Holed up in Mistakotonic Prepatory School Innsmouth Academy yesterday, I stumbled across a headmaster’s report on a girl who was in a spot of bother with some wendigos. I don’t know how I’d missed it before, lying on a desk in plain view, but somehow I had. That’s the nature of The Secret World; look around and you’ll probably spot something you missed first time through. Despite this abundance, on July 31st, the first monthly injection of additional content arrives. Gather round, because I’ve had a private look at Funcom’s secret bits.

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Jeff and Brad reveal a world where all conspiracy theories are true, but Flash support is mere fancy.

Apart from a high school addiction to Phantasy Star Online (Level 100 HuCast!), and a six-day foray into an ancient World of Warcraft trial edition that came with my Diablo 2 Battlechest, I have very little experience with massively multiplayer online games. The Secret World, however, has intrigued me ever since it was first announced. Here was an MMO that not only had a real-world setting, but one that drew its story and lore from urban legends and conspiracy theories. Illuminati, Templars, Mothman? In short, it sounded like my cup of tea, so I dug in once early access kicked off at the end of June.

The following isn't a review of The Secret World. Instead, it's offered as an account of my own experiences - an MMO novice - playing through Funcom's recently launched online game.

#thesecretworld It's not that I'm terrible at combat. On the contrary: I'm pretty good at slicing things up. I've got solid DPS and a couple of powerful heals that make me a force to be reckoned with. It's just that my judgment and self-preservation instincts seem to be more or less entirely absent. More »

The Secret World’s off to a strong start, but we live in a world of short attention spans and even shorter tolerances for subscription fees. So then, how does a heavily story-and-puzzle-solving-focused MMO keep players from scattering to the winds like fickle, fickle fall leaves or SWTOR’s userbase? Well, by giving them more of those things. Constantly. Every month. Sorry, Funcom employees. Please don’t haunt me when you all become fatally sleep-deprived ghosts.

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Brad and Jeff attempt to get Drew's attention as they run down a quick list of Quick Looks.

#thesecretworld Each of the three secret societies in Funcom's paranormal MMO The Secret World have their own way of introducing players to the game's primary conflict. The Templar use magic. The Illuminati use drugs. And the mysterious Dragon? They induct their members the old fashioned, NSFW way. More »

#thesecretworld In June of 2001, Norwegian video game developer Funcom released its first massively-multiplayer online game, Anarchy Online. It is considered by many to be the worst buggy MMO launch in the history of the genre. This week sees the release of Funcom's third MMO, and it might be the best buggy MMO launch of all time. More »

#fantasy When I was writing about The Secret World yesterday, I mentioned that for many years, I've wanted to play an MMO based on Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere. So far, The Secret World does some, but not all, of what I've always wished I could see a massively multiplayer world do. But as I've been thinking about it, I'd love to see single-player games with a new focus, too. And much of it all comes down to the same focus. More »

Secrets! Everybody has them – even you. Maybe you occasionally take two samples at the grocery store, or talk on your cell phone while driving, putting millions at risk. Or perhaps you’re just part of some boring, hum-drum Illuminati that controls the world’s every thought and action. The Secret World creative director Ragnar Tornquist used to be like you – except more interesting and with a cooler name. Now, though, his secrets are all gone. Yep, I snatched up every last one. He’s afraid of liquorice-flavored jellybeans. True story. But also, more pertinently, he thinks Secret World “doesn’t feel like any other MMO” in existence, and he has big plans about how to keep you wayward folk interested long after launch. Read on for all of that and more.

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#thesecretworld It all begins with a bee. More »

#thesecretworld More »

I’ve been exploring The Secret World for a good while now, so even though Funcom have only just released it into our own unenigmatic land, I’m ready to tell you wot I think. Of course, given the nature of the game, I’ll be continuing to play, revisiting and reporting back, but I’ve already seen a great deal of the content and so I’m going to do this the only way I know how. Words, ordered into sentences, conveying ideas.

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Check out the official Launch Trailer for Funcom's new MMO, The Secret World, which launched for PC on July 3rd.

#thesecretworld The Secret World officially launches next week, on July 3. It's a somewhat unconventional approach to the MMORPG genre, set in the sinister, secret underbelly of the real world, the 21st century Earth we all inahbit. And while developers Funcom have been running the standard closed beta and public beta weekends, something more sinister has been going on around the edges. More »