Anyone been playing this? A friend got me into it over the new year and I'm finding it interesting. Huge urban-fantasy-horror-intrigue type setting...

I played it for a while, but got back into Guild Wars 2 with some friends, so I haven't picked it up for a while. I think my primary character was near the end of the Egyptian zone while my secondaries were stuck in the middle of Lovecraft Country (Solomon Island?).

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

I played it for a while myself. First when it was in beta, and again when it went subscription-free and I got the client on sale.

Unfortunately I drift from MMO to MMO like a leaf, so its isn't even installed in my current computer. (And in fact I am currently not really playing an MMO at all.)

I like it well enough, especially the fact that it let you chose two weapons, but I never got all that far with any of my characters.

Some friends and I had a few characters running this. The farthest we got was before Venice/Tokyo before we stopped playing due a combination of other interests, time available and an artificial 'gear level' requirement implemented at that stage in order to survive the monster spike.
I did enjoy it, customization (both in appearance and abilities) was quite expansive and could be shifted about at anytime save in-combat but one of the ultimate issues for the sections added after the initial three zones was being designed around characters with top grade gear and optimized powers.

>but one of the ultimate issues for the sections added after the
>initial three zones was being designed around characters with top
>grade gear and optimized powers.

I'll just note cynically that with some variation on the number of initial zones, this could be written about every MMO ever published, which is kind of why I haven't played one seriously since City of Heroes went away.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>>but one of the ultimate issues for the sections added after the
>>initial three zones was being designed around characters with top
>>grade gear and optimized powers.
>
>I'll just note cynically that with some variation on the number of
>initial zones, this could be written about every MMO ever published,
>which is kind of why I haven't played one seriously since City of
>Heroes went away.
>

Granted, but usually it isn't so blatant about it like the very first mob spawn (not a boss, just the plan first mob of the map) wiping out the party in under a minute three times over. We weren't 'top tier' in gear, but we were high mid, familiar with the other's play-style and the team was tank/heal/dps. Tank was dropped in three hits.

>Granted, but usually it isn't so blatant about it like the very first
>mob spawn (not a boss, just the plan first mob of the map) wiping out
>the party in under a minute three times over.

Heh, it isn't an MMO, but something like that was why I quit playing Dragon Age Origins, after a party I had evidently unsufficiently min-maxed got wiped by random-encounter wolves. I kind of suck at games, but not that much. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Fantasy MMO RuneScape has its problems, but in my experience (which is admittedly several years out of date) "failing to add new lowbie content" isn't one of them.

>Anyone been playing this? A friend got me into it over the new year
>and I'm finding it interesting. Huge urban-fantasy-horror-intrigue
>type setting...

If you mean The Secret World, then yes! :D

I and at least two others I know who check in around these parts semi-regularly play, also semi-regularly. I've been in it since beta. Helluva lot of fun in my opinion, but sadly is lacking in fresh new content on a regular basis -- and replayability is similarly lackluster, because the faction storylines are actually just one storyline told through a very lightly tinted lens.

But still. Helluva lot of fun, every time a new issue comes out or an event is going on I'm back in there, 8/10 would play again, etc.

As for the high-end gear requirements... I'm not sure how much of that is perception and how much is reality. It's not a traditional MMO for a lot of reasons and if you've done the traditional thing and focused on, say, tanking -- and at that, one style of tanking -- then yeah, you're gonna have a bad time. If you learn to adapt to the enemy -- and more importantly, learn to adapt your abilities on the fly -- then the level progression is pretty smooth. There is a endgame bump (when you first get to Tokyo), but the intro missions in that zone give you what you need to survive.

Unfortunately that is where it begins to get grindy, which makes me sad, but it's not terrible, especially if you've got friends to play with.

One thing to keep in mind, that is *not* made crystal-clear from the outset: pay attention to the difficulty ratings. Unlike most other MMOs, you're not going to get super-duper-bonus XP for taking on things outside your normal ability. Normal difficulty really is the sweet spot. If a mission says it's too hard, back off, come back later.

--sofaspud
--

Also assuming you meant The Secret World, I played the hell out of it at launch, got to the end of content at the time, put it down, and never looked back.

Duo'd the whole way through, had an absolute blast. Probably the only MMO to actually make you think while leveling and questing. The hooks of having to either just know or be able to look up information to be able to solve quests were great. At one point to solve a quest my buddy downloaded a morse code decoder onto his phone so he could play the game audio into it so we could solve a quest.
The atmosphere is pretty great, too.

Apparantly they are doing a revamp to TSW to be launched later this year:
http://massivelyop.com/2017/02/27/the-secret-world-is-being-relaunched-in-2017/

Part of the redo is going to be the new player experience, so might be a good time to start then.

-VR
We can't stop here! This is Lovecraft country!!
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

Ohhh, if they're going to keep the great setting and story and fix the combat, I am so in on this...

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

A bit late to the party but I do play TSW from time to time. I'm a bit of an MMO junkie so I hop from one to another pretty frequently. TSW has some of the most fun settings of any of the games I've played, unfortunately it has one of the weaker overall sets of mechanics. It's great fun at the start, though, and absolutely worth playing through at least once. Tokyo, in particular, freaked me the hell out. I made the poor decision of playing through that section in the middle of the night with the lights out. I may or may not have let out completely manly yelps that may or may not have caused the cat to launch herself from my lap.