Dark Days Are Coming - New Funcom Project

[SnakeCharmer]

90% of the beta testers plan to buy and play the game.

I missed this but it bears stressing: any time you EVER see Erling talk about anything, assume he's lying. He's pathological when it comes to pre-release interviews.

Pretty much this. 

Anyone still testing this terrible game is likely to buy it (ie the hardcore, 'this is beta guyz we're hear to give feedback so they can make the game beter!').  They're the ones that honestly believe a miracle patch is coming or that it will be fixed within a couple months after launch because they have faith in Funcom.

Those that 'tested' it, said 'holy fuck this is awful' probably added Funcom to their spam list and blocked their emails.

[Modern Angel]

I'm okay with the game, actually. It's just the first game that I really, REALLY can't run on my four year old machine. There is an optimization pass to come, so I'm hoping that helps. But, really, Erling....

[blackwulf]

I have to take some of the hate I'm seeing here with a grain of salt.  I'm hearing too many good reviews from other places.  I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.  So, not a love for Erling, eh?  He spewed forth some untruths in the AOC days or something?  Tor and Ragnar seem pretty cool, though.  Hopefully they can balance him out.

[HaemishM]

It's not AWFUL. It just isn't good enough to keep me interested enough to get out of the first big instance area. To be fair, there is a SHITTON of content/quests in that first area instance. I just can't play it for more than an hour without being bored.

[Draegan]

The game could be interesting if it had better combat animations, or animations in general.  However I can't really get into it when I compare it to Tera on the animation front.

[Modern Angel]

So, not a love for Erling, eh?  He spewed forth some untruths in the AOC days or something? Tor and Ragnar seem pretty cool, though.  Hopefully they can balance him out.

I'm always wary of this because I still have really close friends working there, so if I say "Erling (plus Gaute; they were like a heel tag team) said INSERT LIE HERE" then that runs the risk of hurting the livelihoods of my close friends. Possibly unfairly, since Erling seems to have taken a much, much smaller role in the PR blitz now than with AoC, along with TSW being a decent game. I really *do* have faith in a lot of folks working on TSW, even if the final product ends up being let down a bit due to Funcom's business culture.

Suffice it to say that we would watch Gamespot or wherever interviews as they happened in the office as AoC neared launch and would see Erling and Gaute just baldfaced lie to the public about what was in the game. Not little lies or stretching the truth, the way all gaming companies unfortunately do. I'm talking completely making up stuff that was supposedly being worked on, telling the press, and then nowhere to be found after launch when everyone found out that said stuff wasn't in the game.

I never met him face to face. I'm sure he's very nice. But amongst the US QA grunts, knowing we were first on the chopping block (well, after CS) if things went south? Not popular, even though none of us had ever met him face to face. I can't count the number of times we'd read a bullshit press release or watch one of the aforementioned interviews and then have a grumbling pow wow amounting to "Man, fucking Erling.... we've never even SEEN that thing he's talking about."

[ghost]

It's not AWFUL. It just isn't good enough to keep me interested enough to get out of the first big instance area. To be fair, there is a SHITTON of content/quests in that first area instance. I just can't play it for more than an hour without being bored.

Maybe they're attempting the reverse of AoC-  when you get done with the first area it suddenly becomes very interesting and well put together. 

[Draegan]

If they happen to fix the combat animations and effects before launch, I can see this game be moderately successful.

[UnSub]

Not if they keep the subscription model.

Which they won't, because Funcom is a F2P company. It's a pity they don't realise that.

[luckton]

Not if they keep the subscription model.

Which they won't, because Funcom is a F2P company. It's a pity they don't realise that.

This writing has been on the wall for a while, but don't tell Draegan that.  He'll just get mad and call you a noob 

[Ratman_tf]

I got an email today to join the SW beta. I click the link, and it says I need a Facebook account to participate?  No thank you.

[Lantyssa]

It's the Secret War Facebook game beta, which might get you into the Secret War beta.

[UnSub]

I've bitched before, but SUPA SEKRET CONSPIRACY + FACEBOOK = DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Funcom were doing ARG stuff with Twitter and false sites, but now it is Facebook apps in time for launch. Such a downgrade.

[Lantyssa]

No, but they probably want people to know about their game rather than accidentally be too good at generating a hidden conspiracy.

[blackwulf]

Yeah, the whole FB thing sounded really hokey to me, so I've avoided it.  I mean, I don't get all bent out of shape about it though - it IS optional.

[Cadaverine]

I gave it a brief look the other night, and it's primarily about recruiting people from your friends list, and posting pictures/videos to your wall.

[Falconeer]

First beta weekend is this Friday. Access granted to everyone who preordered, they say, but no one has received anything so far. Mail, key, client, nothing.

[luckton]

First beta weekend is this Friday. Access granted to everyone who preordered, they say, but no one has received anything so far. Mail, key, client, nothing.

Did anyone actually preorder? 

[Falconeer]

Yes I did, and since I didn't get any invite yet nor I can see my account flagged for beta or early access I messaged customer service about it. I got a reply after 8 (!) minutes. Here it is:

--Greetings

We have checked your account page and it shows that you did purchase beta
access and will not received beta invite email until closer to release.
Regards,

Kevin / GM Bodulfryn
Funcom Customer Support Associate

 

"and will not received beta invite email until closer to release"?
This seems to indicate that I am not eligible for this week beta event. It's worth noting that I placed my preorder on the official website about 10 minutes after it became available.
It's also worth noting that by preordering on their website you are supposed to get:



Fuck you, ok?

[01101010]

Funcom... the gift that keeps on giving. 

[Ghambit]

This is going to become one of those games that 'special people' play, like FallenEarth.

[Surlyboi]

Fallen Earth had some good points, the budget was just too low to give it stickiness.

[Tyrnan]

If it was any other company I'd say maybe they meant you won't get the invite until closer to the release of the beta. But since it's FunCom, who knows?

[jakonovski]

This is going to become one of those games that 'special people' play, like FallenEarth.

How rude!

[blackwulf]

First beta weekend is this Friday. Access granted to everyone who preordered, they say, but no one has received anything so far. Mail, key, client, nothing.

Did anyone actually preorder? 

I did, from Amazon, but I cancelled it when I heard about TES Online.  I know they are different and coming out at different times, but really my mental health can only afford for me to be optimistic about 1 MMO at a time.  Especially when I seem to be the only person in the universe that is interested in them :)

[Falconeer]

I preordered but I am not optimistic about it. It has a bit of story, so I plan on making 1 or 2 months at best out of it, and I would be happy. For some people MMOs are long time investments. To me they _could_ be, and I love when they can capture me for that long, but most of the time I consume any given game in 2 to 6 weeks and I feel that my money has been well spent whenever I surpass they 15 days mark. I am pretty sure I'll enjoy Secret World that much, and I have no expectations beyond it but anything more would be surprising and welcome.

Hell, I bought SWTOR despite the very negative impressions I got from the beta. And I definitely got my money out of it. Why should I ever not buy a Cthulhu inspired online game that has a decent single player portion and "potential" for some short-lived-but-still-there online fun with friends?

[Falconeer]

A winner is Tyrnan.

-- Greetings,
  You will have access to Beta weekend but the link won't be available
closer to the the release of this beta weekend. I apologize for any
confusion.

Regards,

Kevin / GM Bodulfryn

 

[Falconeer]

Since I look like the Secret World fanboi here, I might as well play along. Here it is.

I was thinking of Jay Wilson's words from that Diablo 3 interview while reading this. "Do you prefer to play a very innovative game or a very well executed one?" he asks, while fending off the accusation that Blizzard seldom innovates.
I know I love very well executed ones, but it's hard not to think that it's thanks to stuff like THIS, no matter how poorly executed, that eventually they can later work their magic. Nothing wrong with that, my point is that I am thankful for well executed games as well as I am for innovative ones.

Regardless of comparisons, and of all the (nevative) rumours about The Secret World, I can't help appreciating how they think their games at Funcom.

Bits...

1: Abilities
 
So let's start with the overall basics, and then dig a bit deeper. TSW does not have any classes, but it has 525 unique abilities. When we say that these abilities are unique, we really mean it. We don't have rank 1,2,3,4 etc of an ability. The ability is unique, and it will scale with your gear. A player can potentially learn every single ability in the game. There are no crossroads where the player has to choose either left or right. There are no choices a player can make that would remove his options to purchase an ability at a later date.
 
You gain ability points by acquiring xp. You can then spend these points in the Ability Wheel. Players can't run around with hundreds of abilities, so we're asking them to make a choice: You need to pick 7 active abilities and 7 passive abilities, which preferably work well with each other. The Ability Wheel consists of a basic wheel and an advanced wheel, and the player needs to master all of the basic abilities (14) of a weapon before they can unlock the advanced ones.

(Ironically, this is from Diablo, but it's nice to see it back in a MMORPG)

3. Gear
 
Let's s start with how our items are constructed. Each item consists of up to 3 parts: Prefix, Core and Suffix. These 3 parts hold different stats and can modify an item in different ways. Drops from monsters, and some mission items, will be randomly constructed by combining (up to) a prefix, core and a suffix, but we also have pre-constructed items that will be used for boss drops, some dungeon rewards, vendors etc.

4. Progression
 
So what will the player's journey be like? First of all the player's progression in power is not the same as in traditional MMOs. You will not start out doing 5 damage per hit and end up doing 5000. There is a progression in power, but it's much flatter than in most other games of the genre.
 
In order to explain the progression we need to start talking about xp. At the bottom of the screen is the xp bar, and when the player has filled up 1/3 of it they will be given an ability point. Filling out the whole bar gives a skill point. A player gets xp from many different sources: Killing monsters, PvP, missions and crafting. The amount of xp needed to get an ability point or a skill point is static.
 
The harder the monster or mission is, the more xp it will give, so the "further in" you are in TSW, the faster you will get points. This means that skilling up from 0-10 in a weapon type, or buying all the abilities of a weapon type, is quicker in the late game than in the early game. Keep in mind, though, what I said in the beginning of this article. The abilities in the basic wheel are cheap, so experimenting with new weapons and combinations is quite cheap and forgiving.
 
The game is not flat, but it's flatter than most traditional MMOs. Being a flatter game makes the window of viable content greater for the player, as there are more areas that will give the player xp. To put some numbers into this: When you have played through all of the content in the adventure zones, and for arguments sake maxed all your skills, more than half of those zones will still give you xp. There are also camps in every adventure zone which are meant for only the toughest players. In these camps you really have to think about the horizontal progression (learning a large number of different abilities), and bring highly specialized sets of abilities in order to be successful. This is the type of content we design to push people horizontally, asking people to maybe take a step outside their comfort zone and think in new ways. 

That said, if you read between the lines you might actually find out that the game is not without levels, and in fact the cap is at level 525, which is fascinating in itself...
More seriously, it would be nice to know what's the soft cap.

Also, their crafting sounds cool on paper.

[Ratadm]

So apparently there are still non paid beta invites going out.  Or I've gotten to a point where I black out my mmo purchases as a self defense mechanism.

[Engels]

So apparently there are still non paid beta invites going out.  Or I've gotten to a point where I black out my mmo purchases as a self defense mechanism.

[Ghambit]

This is going to become one of those games that 'special people' play, like FallenEarth.

How rude!

Heh, I was an early tester and player for FE.   
And just sayin', I'll likely be playing TSW unless I cant find the time.  GW2 will sit on the back-burner.  D3 and PS2 take priority.

[Furiously]

I was just debating with myself if I should pre-order to look at the beta when it appeared they are still sending out beta invites for the closed beta.

[Surlyboi]

I was just debating with myself if I should pre-order to look at the beta when it appeared they are still sending out beta invites for the closed beta.

Yup.

[SnakeCharmer]

I was just debating with myself if I should pre-order to look at the beta when it appeared they are still sending out beta invites for the closed beta.

No.

[Surlyboi]

I'm pretty sure he was saying he got a beta invite so now he doesn't have to debate.

At least, that's what happened to me. And seeing as how the only other thing on the horizon for me is the dimming prospects of PS2, why the hell not?