Game-A-Week Episode 19: The Secret World

[10:33 PM]

Back in high school, other than clinically depressed, I was three things. A weeb, a goth and an MMO junkie.

[10:33 PM]

And let me tell you something, that made for one hell of a combo.

[10:34 PM]

If it was an MMO, I likely had already played it. I spread myself so thin playing these types of games that I barely made any progress in any of them.

[10:37 PM]

The highlights of that deserve special mention and they were: Shin Megami Tensei Imagine (Which was believe it or not, my introduction to Shin Megami Tensei and by extension Persona), Eden Eternal, Mabinogi, WonderKing and Spirit Tales.

[10:38 PM]

But after high school had ended, I received this computer that I am typing on right now as a gift for getting accepted into college.

[10:39 PM]

I saw this as a chance to escape from the MMO junkie life. Not only that, but it was a top of the line computer. I could do anything with it. This computer was truly a blank slate.

[10:40 PM]

I wanted to stop spreading myself thin on MMOs and only play one.

[10:40 PM]

It was finally time for me to choose my "Forever MMO"

[10:41 PM]

Yes, the moment that comes to everyone in life, had finally come to me.(e

[10:42 PM]

But which one would I choose?

[10:43 PM]

I didn't want to dedicate myself to a free game so every game I had played as a junkie was out of the question. (You will always be in my heart, Mabinogi)

[10:44 PM]

I wanted it to be something I had to pay for in order to guarantee a certain level of quality but I didn't want to pay a subscription. Because that shit adds up and its dumb. So WoW and Final Fantasy XIV were out.

[10:44 PM]

That left only one business model left: Buy to play.

[10:46 PM]

MMOs that you purchase once and play to your hearts content. You know, like every other game. I thought the concept was genius. So simple, so obvious and yet, in the MMO world, it was unique.

[10:46 PM]

At the time (The year 2014), there were only two buy to play MMOs on the market.

[10:47 PM]

Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World

[10:47 PM]

My initial reaction was to lean toward The Secret World based entirely on the fact that Guild Wars 2 was a sequel.

[10:48 PM]

MMO sequels are red flags to me. What happened to the first game? Is this one also in danger of being replaced by a successor down the line? Why was there the number 2 in the title?

[10:49 PM]

But I'm not the kind of person to make a big decision based on a knee jerk reaction.

[10:52 PM]

So, I did some research and after giving it a good amount of thought, I decided Guild Wars 2 was the winner. Its a fantasy MMO instead of taking place in modern day like the Secret World, the developer ArenaNet had said there will never be a Guild Wars 3 and Angry Joe who hates everything gave it a 10/10 while The Secret World had mixed reviews.

[10:55 PM]

It was a tough decision, but I had chosen Guild Wars 2 as my forever MMO. Of course, this was before I took a step back and realized I'm letting my gaming computer go to waste by only playing one game but that's beside the point. I still make sure Guild Wars 2 feels special by letting it be the only game allowed to sit on my desktop. Well, except for WoW Classic and probably also Phantasy Star Online 2 and Blue Protocol but those are special exceptions for personal, historic reasons.

[10:57 PM]

And since then, the game has gone Free-To-Play so Game-A-Week is the perfect chance to ask the ultimate question: Did I make the right choice?

[10:59 PM]

And yes, this is still part of the Roleplaying Arc. This time I went for "serious gender-flipped roleplay". So I would do serious roleplaying like I did in Rift but this time, I tried my hand at playing as the opposite gender.

[11:00 PM]

And since this was a special case, I went all-out.

[11:02 PM]

My character was a scottish squire from the 15th century who had a momentary brush with cosmic forces and ended up flung far into the future to what is now modern day New York. While she's managed to adjust to life in this strange new world, her only goal is to get back to the past!

[11:04 PM]

But... How will she get back to the past? (Sa-mu-rai Jack!). Just when she's about to give up, she starts hearing voices and a strange man comes knocking on her door....

[11:05 PM]

And that's pretty much the gist of it, I actually don't know if there WERE Scottish knights or if women could even be knights for that matter. But this is a game where you fight Cthulhu so I don't think it needs to be historically accurate.

I actually even wrote a back story for her, check it out.

[11:40 PM]

"My name is Aileana Ailsa, squire to Sir Gregory Wentworth of Nottinghamshire. I'm not exactly sure how this happened but one day I encoutered a strange, pulsating light after polishing my knight's blade and the next moment, I was surronded by towers of glass and steel. After quite the adventure of which, we do not neec to discuss, I found out that I had somehow been transported to hundreds of years into the future and my home was ont he other side of the ocean! After I was arrested by the poorly armoured knights that called themselves "The Police" and had to spend what felt like a year in what was called a "mental hospital", I had realized that I could not rely on anyone to help me. I had to find my way home on my own. After having had the most chilling dream in my one bedroom apartment, I came face to face with the same pulsating light that forced this curse upon me. But it did not take me back... This time, it entered me. A voice echoed through my head but I coudln't understand it and it felt like my body had been lit ablaze. And I think it was, my room was destroyed! After some time, I had come to realize that I could move the searing pain by adjusting my muscles until a flame popped out of ym hand. It was almost as if I could control it... Was this magic? I took one week off from work to master my new power and just when I thought I had, there was a knock on my door. I opened it to a man representing an organization called the "Illuminati" and that they were interested in someone with my talents. After searching for hints around the city, I found their base of operation. I immediately regretted doing this.

They were horrible and terrible people. They are rude, vulgar, immoral, indecent, blasphemous and many other words for horrible and terrible. One day, they will get what is coming to them and they will all die in a fire. A big one. But while I cannot stand the Illuminati, I had little choice but to join them. Mostly because if I didn't, they would kill me but also because they deal with the supernatural and if there IS a way home, they were my only hope to find it. And so, they took me in to their ranks. "AilSquire" is what they call me. After I had become the Illuminati's new squire, they sent me on my first mission. To the town of Kingsmouth. I was not prepared for what awaited me in Kingsmout. The dead walked, the citizens practiced human sacrifice, strange otherworldly creatures lurked in the waters which would transform into demonic eggs on the beach to create more of their spawn and there were corpses as far as the eye could see. It was hell on Earth. I could stayed in my apartment forever and left my old life behind. If I had done that, I never would have known horrors beyond my wildest imagination. I should have done that, I had much more faith in this world back then. I am now determined more than ever to return home. If only, to escape this hell. The dead want to eat me alive and the living aren't much better. One day, I will leave this horrid place and return to you, my precious dear Sir Gregory. How I long for that day....."

At character creation, there are two choices to make: Your faction and your class. By the way, character creation has a lot of options but is still rather limited. There are a million different hairstyles but not a single one with long hair. Shoulder length hair with a tiny little braid in the back was the closest I could get to a "celtic" look. Also, the character models look like they were ripped straight from the Sims 4.

[11:46 PM]

The factions are the Illuminati, the Templars, and the Dragon. I chose the Illuminati because, come on, how could I not?

[11:47 PM]

For my class, I chose Assassin because it was the only class that used a sword as its primary weapon so it was the closest I could get to being a knight or a squire. Plus, it had fire magic as its secondary weapon. Bonus!

[11:50 PM]

Now before I go any further, I need to talk about something rather important.

[11:50 PM]

And that something is the version of the game I played.

[11:50 PM]

There are two versions of the game: The Secret World and Secret World Legends.

[11:52 PM]

The Secret World is the original version that I would have played had I chosen this game as my forever MMO 6 years ago.

[11:54 PM]

When The Secret World went free to play, it didn't just go free to play. It rebooted itself into a completely overhauled, less imaginative version of the game. Re-branded as "Secret World Legends", it became a totally different game.

[11:55 PM]

And it IS a totally different game because you can still play The Secret World. (the original, non reboot). The servers are still running.

[11:56 PM]

Other than being able to count the game's population on less than one hand, there's a catch. And its the reason WHY you can count the numbers of players playing it on one hand.

[11:57 PM]

It is only available to those that have played the buy to play version of the game. And the game isn't being sold anymore either, so there aren't any new players coming in. Just old players leaving.

[11:58 PM]

Which means, there was no way for me to play this version of the game. I obviously did not have an already existing paid account and even if I had interest in paying for one (Which I didn't), I couldn't even do that.

It didn't stop me from trying to get into it with my free account though. It didn't work but hey, it was worth a try.

So yes, I ended up having to play the rebooted "Secret World Legends"

[12:01 AM]

There was another game that did something similar in the past. That game was called Star Wars Galaxies. The game had a classless system and one of the coolest things about it was figuring out how to use the force and become a jedi.

[12:02 AM]

It was something that was truly hiddden, very few players ever became jedi.

[12:03 AM]

That is, until a massive overhaul update went live that added classes to the game and you could just pick jedi as your class.

[12:04 AM]

The update absolutely killed the game, creating a mass exodus of players and eventually led to its shut-down. The game's charm was gone, it wasn't the game everyone loved anymore.

[12:05 AM]

And that's pretty much what happened here. I don't know all the details but what I do know is that The Secret World had a classless, weapon based skill system and Secret World Legends has cookie cutter classes. And that kind of change sounds very familiar.

[12:09 AM]

Of course, the difference is that Star Wars Galaxies released the update because they actually thought it was a good idea. Secret World Legends happened as a response to the game's commercial failure and the game had to become more of a standard MMO in order to survive instead of just making the game free to play. I mean, there are there are two entire separate "Secret World" games, for crying out loud!

[12:10 AM]

As for the game itself, the only thing I've described so far is the story (Worked it into my character's backstory) and honestly, that's the only thing worth mentioning about the game.

[12:11 AM]

The gameplay is dreadfully boring. I have an AOE attack and a single target attack. I've never used more than one button for ANY fight. Halfway through the first chapter, it hit me with a big ol' "Reach level 12 to progress". Listen, mandatory grinding is bad game design. You're supposed to design the game so I hit level 12 when I get to this point. A good game is specifically designed to have you naturally level throughout the game. The second your game hits a grind wall, you've failed as a game designer. Grinding is supposed to be for extra items or to fight stupidly hard optional bosses. Grinding is NOT supposed to ne required just to be able to play the next part of the game. Reward the player for going out of their way, don't punish them for following YOUR game's design.(edited)

[12:11 AM]

I can see why this game failed. Because the actual game isn't that great. This is a game you play exclusively for its story and atmosphere.

[12:12 AM]

Which, honestly, is a tad bit too dark for my tastes. The world already bums me out. I don't need my games doing that to me too.

[12:13 AM]

And I appreciate a well placed tearkerker but when your entire game is a bummer, I ain't having it. I'm all about the good vibes.

[12:14 AM]

So.

[12:14 AM]

Did I make the right choice? Well, Guild Wars 2 didn't have to reboot itself into a completely different game as a desperate attempt to stay alive sooooooooo....(edited)

[12:14 AM]

Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.

[12:20 AM]

I give The Secret World a 5/10. The gameplay is so boring, its barely even there, the server are... Wait, did I not talk about the servers? Oh boy. They suck. Some of the worst servers I've ever experienced. There was not a moment when I wasn't lagging. I was lagging even during cutscenes. The only interesting part of this game is the story and it IS interesting enough for me to want to see where it goes but that's it. Despite the failing grade, I'll continue to play this game temporarily purely for the story a la Star Wars: The Old Republic (But at least that game had good gameplay for the story content even if the other content was trash) but the second I run out of space on my hardrive, this game is the first to go and I'm not looking back.

[12:22 AM]

And here's my character: Squire Aileana Ailsa at the beginning, middle and end of her Game-A-Week journey.

[11:59 PM]

[12:22 AM

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