The Secret World is an MMORPG being developed by FunCom and published by EA. An MMO set in our modern day world with the player faction choices being Illuminati, Templars and Dragon, the secret societies controlling our world from behind the scenes. Evil has risen up in our world in the form of zombies, werewolves, vampires, ghosts and every other horrific imaginary creature ever. As we were told at PAX East, “All the myths are true.”
The Secret World is using your basic WoW-esque MMO set-up: WASD/Mouse control, quest givers and of course the almighty hot bar. It’s what TSW is doing differently that becomes intriguing. There is no level cap, as well as no character classes. Each player has the option to learn each of TSW’s 588 abilities. With that many abilities how can you just not wreck shop throughout the whole game? FunCom has limited the abilities you’re allowed to use at any given time, to 7 active and 7 passive. This is where you can almost form your own character class. Picking specific abilities to match how your group is needing a you to play at that time.
There are also 9 weapon categories with 9 skill sets pertaining to these categories. Again, your character may max out all 9 skill sets if you choose to do so. Want to use a weapon that you don’t have the skill set for? Sorry, man. No go. Here is how FunCom keeps you from being able to steamroll all evil in your path.
There is also raid-style group missions that will having you fighting bosses with numerous combat mechanics to keep track of. Even while going about my business doing regular quests there were moments where I was over run with a numerous group of enemies. Each of these enemies had a different mode of attacking me. Forcing me to keep track of which enemies did what in a pinch. The gameplay seems to be very fast paced in terms of it’s combat from what I played. I can only assume that if the smaller mob encounters were this fast paced, that boss fights would be even more so.
So far The Secret World is shaping up to be a solid MMO experience with tons play-style options, fast paced action and a ton of childhood horrors. We’ll know for certain how it pans out when The Secret World releases on PC July, 3rd.
Been really looking forward to this game. Beta reactions seem pretty mixed though, from what I’ve read, with combat being pretty heavily criticized by some people. On the other hand, most people seem to say the story’s fantastic. I’m hoping they’ll come out with something really cool that they expand on, but I’m still worried it’ll be another Age of Conan…
This sounds amazing. No level cap? Massive amounts of abilities? MMO dreams.