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.
Screaming monkeys 
Well said!
I don’t know… I’m not sending any message other than TSW isn’t worth my money to purchase, or subscribe – and I’ sending this message by avoiding it.
This is not something intentional – it’s just the logical conclusion to the thought process I used to create an initial gut reaction o the game in general having never played it.
On the other hand, I feel no obligation to attempt to steer game direction by way of subsidizing a company who’s product I don’t care to purchase. By subsidizing an inferior product, you are in fact enabling more of the same.
It’s a good thought, and well intended, but at the end of the day it’s only about money.
If it ain’t broke….
It had an interesting premise, but the clunky controls and combat just turned me off completely. I think it will have some legs if it decides to pull a TOR and go free to play.
Yeh that model would definitely work for them and with the updates being purchasable.. the real world clothing is very imviting but with a sub I haven’t even considered buying any.
The one comment I heard is that TSW is content light but content rich, which very well points out the main issue. There really isn’t much to there but what is is well crafted which I think makes it better suited to a ftp model.
I really do hope too that it doesn’t harm future innovation.
No, I was never one of those who bemoaned the lack of innovation in current MMO’s. If a game is well-done and I enjoy playing it, who cares if some hipster somewhere finds it lacking in innovation?
But the innovation and the novel setting are the main reasons I decided to plunk down for a TSW lifetime sub.
This. Everybody says “give me something new and different!” but when a company actually does, people rush to buy Extruded Fantasy Product Goes To Cash-Shop Land 2 instead.
I was enthusiastic about TSW and my character finished up in the 2nd last area before I stopped playing the game. I became disillusioned with TSW because the endgame devolved into yet another MMO gear grind just to be allowed access to the instanced content.
As a casual player I could not find any groups willing to do this content as I did not have QL 10.0 or 10.1 gear. I also found the the game had devolved into a bunch of elitists sitting in Agartha spamming for groups and refusing to take anyone who did not have prior knowledge of the dungeons. I also did not have supposedly required skills learned from the 500 skills on offer.
In the end it became all too hard and I decided to head to more player friendly games – GW2 being a perfect example. 😉
I bought the lifetime, liked the game a lot…then GW2 came a long and since then I never clicked on that little TSW icon again
It’s a great game though and sad to see it having such problems.
I heartily agree.
People whine and scream about the industry getting stale, and then go out and buy WoW-clone #45 because ultimately this is what they’re more comfortable with.
As Lum said over at Broken Toys, this is why we can’t have nice things…
[…] lonomonkey argues that players who want MMOs to go places other than fantasy need to back new ideas with their money by supporting games like TSW when they are released. I would rather give the industry the message that if they make fun games, I will buy them. […]