TSW goes Buy to play and I’m happy for it

So I don’t know exactly how to tag the business model of The Secret World now so I’ll steal the idea that I saw somewhere else and tag it Buy to play. Buy the game and then play for free as long as you want. It’s not exactly free to play since you do have to buy something but it’s pretty damn close and in my opinion, even better because you do get way more out of the game than normal free to play games.

So what do you get for free? Everything! After the initial purchase you have full access to the game without any restriction just as if you had subscribed before. You can do dungeons, raids and pvp to your heart content, you have access to all the character creation options and all the weapons. F2P games tend to have serious restrictions for the free players but not Secret World and I think that’s a really smart move. There’s still a cash shop for you if you want more fashion, pets and xp boosts but there’s no need to buy anything . If I’m not mistaken the only weapons available are upgraded starter stuff so nothing game breaking.

In my case I had paid for lifetime so I’m not really affected (I do get free money in the store and a discount) but I love it because a few friends are trying out the game now and any mmo is better with friends. During the weekend you could hear a lot of new players trying out the game and the most recurring comment was along the lines of “can’t believe I missed this one”.

So, I really wish this will help out Funcom and help push forward TSW. I remember hearing about a Louisiana style zone a while back in a dev interview and I want to see that happen.

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Secret world troubles and the message we’re sending

If you’re paying attention to MMO news at large which is likely if you are reading this blog, you know that The Secret world from Funcom is suffering right now. While we don’t know the exact details, the gist of it is that TSW is not selling enough and has not enough subscribers leading to dire consequences like Funcom stock taking a huge drop.

If news of this sort continues to surface, I wouldn’t be surprised to see TSW join the list of MMOs that got cancelled soon after their launch. It’s a tragedy.

Reviews at launch were mixed and TSW reviews scored poorly in classic MMO areas like combat, pvp and endgame. However, a lot of critics and blogs praised the game for it’s very innovative storytelling, atmosphere and quest flow. In short, if what you’re interested in is storytelling and a coherent world, TSW is probably one the best games out there. Not only that but they did it while avoiding the classic medieval fantasy world.

The message

I’m going to address a few specific people here. All those who ever said that MMOs need to be about world first and not systems, all those who lament the fact that there’s too few MMOs who break out of the classic fantasy tropes. I’m talking to everyone who says MMOs never innovate and those who keep complaining about WoW, Rift, GW and their clones.

Are you playing TSW right now?

Are you encouraging new ideas by supporting them when they do appear?

Look at the current MMO industry, the most succesful games all emulate WoW to some degree and are all fantasy based MMOs. MMOs that are trying different either disappear or quickly become niche games.

What message do you think we’re sending to the industry? To the ones who pay for developing MMOs?

We’re saying: Guys! Don’t bother innovating too much or giving us anything other than swords, elves and dragons. Don’t change too much the formula either. We want our ability bars, our kill ten rats quests and our raids. We’re going to scream we want different so just switch the furniture around enough so we think we’re getting something new.

That’s what we are saying. So if you’re one of those people I addressed earlier, I ask again, why not pick up a game like Secret world and support a company that had the guts to do things differently and tell the investors that yes, we also want something else than fantasy MMOs.

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I think I’m might be insane

I’m struggling to put into words what I’m thinking about my current MMO situation.  I’m raiding in Swtor, I’m exploring Secret World, I’m not caring in WoW and I’m curious about Gw2. I’m pretty much playing four MMOs at the same time and so far I’m managing well just by spending a bit of time here and there. How I got to this point I don’t know for sure but when I think about it I think it’s simply because no MMO seems to be able to satisfy my all on its own.

Let me start off with the Secret World. It’s a great exploration MMO, right up there with Lotro (which I need to get back to…) and every time I play it I come away with that great feeling you get after seeing a good movie. The downside though is that I’m pretty much the only one playing it in my circle of friends and as far as endgame goes I don’t think it would be a good fit.

Guild Wars 2 is really more of a curiosity thing on my part. Normaly I wouldn’t have considered it but I was curious and since there’s no sub I felt like I wasn’t losing anything.  So far I don’t think it’s a bad game but it just doesn’t click… I’m giving it more time to see if it gets better later on.

Swtor… well… Swtor is where the people I love raiding with are. That’s pretty much it. The more I think about it and the more I think this should have been a single player game and not an MMO. The game is great when you level the first time around but the endgame is atrocious. Dailies are a pain, game performance is poor and I just don’t feel like logging in unless there’s something going on. The raids themselves are okay but by themselves they wouldn’t get me to subscribe.

Why am I still playing? Because as I said so often, that’s where my friends are and playing with these people is enough to keep me playing and enduring dailies.

And we come to WoW, the game I never thought I’d play again. When I resubed it was mostly to get rid of the nostalgia bug and also to keep in touch with some people. And then I’m finding myself playing more than I thought I would. I don’t know exactly how to explain it but there’s something about WoW that’s relaxing. I don’t have to over think anything, I can just go out and kill mobs, get a cute pet and call it a day. I think I was missing this simplicity.

So that’s pretty much me right now. Anyone else stuck like me? I’m thinking of making something like Altholics anymous but instead call it Gameaolics anonymous.

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TSW: I put on my detective hat

Investigation missions are one of the big draws of the Secret world and quite a treat for anyone like me who loves a good puzzle and mystery. Not only that, but they are all sufficiently different from one another that you can’t solve them all the same way. While most use the Internet in some form, some will have you lookup references, another deduce code and another could be based on math or science.

Usually, each of these mission has a method to solve it that usually carry one through most of the mission. For example, if a mission is centered around Bible references, you can solve most of the mission by looking up Bible verses for example. The trick then to solve investigation quests is to figure out what is expected of you and that in itself is the biggest challenge.

Now this is the part where I get to admit that despite loving puzzles and giving them a lot of thought, I have cheated on at least one step of each investigation mission I have done save one. Most of them my cheating involved searching the web for how exactly does Funcom expects me to go about solving the puzzle. See, one of the hard part of puzzles is that sometimes you think it’s about finding out references about what an NPC just said when it fact that puzzle is about inventory manipulation. You can get stumped a very long time before figuring out you were searching in the wrong direction.

But yesterday, I finally managed to complete an entire investigation quest from start to finish without looking at any guide or cheating in any way and it felt incredible. I really need to do this more often because it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in an MMO, on par with server first kills and the like. I think Penny-Arcade captured the feeling better than I can with words.

It’s not TSW per say but the feeling still stands

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7 days, 7 levels and 30 missions

In one week exactly I will be away on vacation to enjoy some fun times. One of the reasons that I decided to rush my jedi knight to max level is that I wanted to leave with my leveling done. Now, Secret World is coming out today with patch 1.1 and I’m really excited for the new stuff.

On top of that, they have a contest to celebrate the first month where if you do 30 missions during the weekend you’ll get a special shirt. And my JK is 43… so not there yet and quite a few hours of leveling ahead.

To recap:

• 7 days
• go from 43 to 50 in star wars
• do 30 missions in the secret world

Of course, I still have to go to work and I still have some real life obligations so I’m really not sure if I’ll manage it all but I’m going to try! Wish me luck!

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