AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Oh snap this game is so badass.

http://www.thesecretworld.com/

The Secret World is a brand new P2P MMORPG that has just come out. It has a modern setting where every single myth and legend that you've heard of is real. Zombies, vampires, Cthulhu? daisies right they're all in there.
There isn't any visible armor so if you wanna run around in bunny slippers and a bikini while fighting zombies have fun. There aren't any classes or levels either so you can wield whatever weapon you want and equip whatever skills you think would fight your play style.
Shotgun with elemental magic? Hot daisies look at all that lighting and buckshot fly!

There are 3 playable factions in the game:
The Illuminati have their central hub in New York City in Brooklyn and their motto is "Sex, Drugs, and Rockefeller"
The Templar have their central hub in London, England and they don't fuck about when it comes to destroying any kind of creature of the dark (Or you if you get in their way.)
The Dragon have their hub in Seoul, South Korea. These bastards are all about chaos, they'll fuck shit up if they feel like it's necessary, and daisies it must be necessary half the time.

This game has a BUILT-IN web browser just so you can Google clues that the quests give you, otherwise you're daisies screwed if you try to progress without investigating every clue you find.
There's so much story and lore that the game ACTIVELY rewards you if you find enough lore about what's going on around you.

If all of that hasn't made you want to buy the game just check out this launch video that they've put out, hell check out all their videos.

Ehhhhh...things with the tagline of "Every fictional thing is real" set off warning bells in my head because they tend to become convoluted messes, unable to focus on a single coherent plotline.

Speaking of which, is there an overarching plot in this game? Is there endgame? If there are no levels or skilling up, then what do you spend your time doing? You said there's no visible armor, but is there gear that's better than others so you have some sort of tier rating and an upgrade is meaningful?

You can rank up in whatever faction you choose, and when you reach specific ranks you get a multislot set of clothes of that rank.
So you can end up like this as a junior officer of the Illuminati:


There is an overall plot set for each faction, that is generally the same, with some discrepancies, the Illuminati are all about the profit, so every time you turn in a mission that basically consisted of "You just helped an old lady cross the street" Your main contact will chastise you for wasting her time and that you need to be out there gathering intel and not helping the locals.

Your starting area is on an island off of Maine called Kingsmouth where a strange fog has rolled in and the dead have been rising (among other things.) Your job is to investigate and stop it if possible.

There are 500+ skills that you can train and you do get exp that grants you ability points to train skills and skill points that let you train weapon masteries that let you equip higher quality weapons and they also grant bonus passive effects. If you play long enough you can eventually get all the skills so that you don't get tied down on being only a dps or only a tank, but capable of switching to meet the needs of groups for dungeons and instances.
This is called the ability wheel that organizes and displays all the abilities that are currently in game.
http://i49.tinypic.com/344wkf4.jpg

EDIT: Also; There are set "Decks" that you can use that are basically guidelines to what you want your character to do, Tank, Healer, melee or ranged dps. They also award you a set of clothes if you complete them. You can modify them however you want. In that picture of the Skill Wheel I'm going for the Illuminati "Mercenary" Deck which is Assault Rifle and Elementalism, the green and red circles indicate which skills I've unlocked for the deck and which are still pending.

2nd EDIT: You use your Skill Points (SP) which are separate from Ability Points (AP) to upgrade your weapon masteries, which allows you to equip higher quality weapons. If you weapon quality is too low your attacks will glance and miss more than they would on higher strength monsters. You gain skill points slower than ability points but it's very easy to get enough to keep up with if not surpass your needs

Not faction, the world. If the game is being billed as "Every myth and legend is real" then I am going to expect one hell of a tale involving mortals heisting Zeus's lightning bolts to assassinate Freya so Thor and the rest of the Norse pantheon go on a rampage in Greece and Italy, prompting the djinn to erect barriers to seal off the Middle East for their own protection, shortly before someone with the Seal of Solomon takes control of the djinn and conquers Africa to hunt down Anansi to command every story in existence who is seeking the aid of more mortals and some of the South American gods like Quezacotl to prevent his stories, and therefore the world, from falling into the wrong hands. Meanwhile Cthulhu has woken and devoured Hawaii and part of California, pissing off the Native American gods enough for them to revive and kick his booty, which then prompts Izanagi and Yamato no Orochi to join in the attack to finish him, hoping to get on the Americans' good side to prepare for an assault on China.

I do not really care about the mortals unless they're pissing in a god's face and escaping handily.

I thought the tagline was "Every conspiracy theory is real"
Which may actually be MORE convoluted.

If you look at the end of that video in my first post you'll see the final boss of the first instance you'll run in the game. It's name is "The Ur-Draug" but it's more along the lines of some kind of Cthulhu off-spring. I'm honestly not far enough to see what the rest of the story-line is about. For now I'm still on Solomon Island fighting zombies and deep sea beasts. It's implied that there's something in the depths that is leading the Draug (Think crazy deep sea fish person), and those in-turn are converting local zombies into even more Draug.

I do know that you do go to Egypt and fight mummies and also to Transylvania to fight vampires and witches.

There's pvp war-zones in El Dorado that's basically CTF but with ancient relics. King of the hill in Stonehenge. Then there's a constant war over the Fusang Projects in China.

Does P2P mean Pay to Play? Have Free to Play MMOs gotten so prevalent that we need a acronym for the conventional MMO?

Anywho I took a test that Funcom was doing when the game was in production and I got Dragon, maybe I'll give that faction a go.

I heard about this before, sounded intriguing.

I usually refer to games depending on what their status is, pay to play, free to play. There's so many games nowadays, I have a lot of free to play games on my computer that were once subscription games before they transitioned. Hell I heard Swtor was going free to play.

Funcom uses what's called "Single server" technology, which is fancy talk for "Everyone who is playing the game is on the same server but scattered through out different shards of dimensions, but still capable of chatting with people on different dimensions. The chat speeds along because there's so many people but the lag isn't as bad as you'd think. Although there can be up to 75 people per faction in Fusang Projects so some low-end computers can't handle loading everything that happens.

So far the community is really nice and helpful with quests, although there are some bad apples who seem to think that if you can't figure something out yourself you must be a failure. That's seen in A LOT of MMOs lately though.

Unfortunately Cabals(Guilds) can only be made up of the same faction at the moment, and I'm not sure if they're planning on changing it.

Well I was pretty daisies exited about this game, but its a PC game only so Im out

I haven't seen many mmos that aren't pc games

This game is really well done, barring Madican's desire to see the Gods duke it out right in front of you. That unfortunately wouldn't work with how the story is playing out. Besides don't most gods have a "Do not meddle" law invoked?

I did run a dungeon that basically had me be put in a Native American smoke induced hallucination that caused me to live out a war that occurred millenia ago. It involved the Mayans trying to attack the island to unleash the "evil serpent" that slept inside the mountain. Also Vikings arrived to help the Native Americans (and you) fight back the Mayan sorcerers and the whacked out demons they brought with them. It was pretty awesome. Another npc also states that the gods of the north are on your side when you're running the story quest.


I've just arrived in Egypt where you find that deranged Cultists are ACTUALLY trying to revive their murderous god. Whilst sacrificing people left and right that don't agree with them. I'm speculating that you do end up fighting the Pharaoh but they say that if the Pharaoh awakens then so does Aten their god.

I gotta say though, the voice acting is REALLY well done. The no levels thing means that I don't feel like I have to sludge through killing 300 pigs in order to finally be able to equip that fancy piece of steel that becomes obsolete after I kill another 300 pigs.

Sounds fun, how does combat work?

Er, no. Pretty much every legend of gods and mortals is the gods fucking up mortal lives either for the hell or it or as some kind of test. Norse gods did it, Greek/Roman gods did it, Native American gods did it (Coyote especially), Chinese gods did it.

And I didn't say I wanted to see them duke it out right in front of you, I said that if this game is going to claim that all myths and legends are real then it better deliver on that tagline with some epic plot rather than focus on mortal syndicates with wrong priorities.

The combat is pretty much like a normal mmo, click skills and watch them work.
Although there is no auto attacks there are "Resource Builder" skills that basically build charges on either yourself or your target and there are "Resource Consumers" that require a certain amount of resources to allow you to use the skill. Some skills require either 3/5 or 5/5 and others use however many resources have been built on your target at the time, whether it is 1 or the full 5. I'm not sure if the damage is increases if you use all 5 as compared to just 1 at a time. I really should test it with a damage meter.

You are only allowed 14 skill slots, 7 for actives and 7 for passives. Although you can save and load gear and skill sets as long as you're out of combat. I think having a limit on how many abilities you can have on your quickslot is a pretty good idea since it allows for wider customization than if they let you equip everything you could get your hands on. You can add passives from other weapons and get their benefit, so long as they don't require that you have that weapon equipped for it to work.

There is an active dodge system kind of like Tera where you can dodge aoes and some non-targeted attacks, and you should dodge them whenever possible.


@Madican, I am really bad at trying to explain the storyline, it's just that it's so complex and there's too many intersecting parts to it. Moses is actually in the game, although his name is "Khalid" and he's standing next to a burning bush.

There is actually a mission that has you translate archaic Arabic and another that has you decode a Roman cipher in order to progress. So the game isn't just running about killing X amount of monsters and then returning with X amount of leathers so that this or that npc can make a shiny new belt that he immediately hands to you as your reward.

The crafting is A LOT like Minecraft's in that you have to make the general shape of what you want with the required materials in order to make that item. So a pistol, a belt, a health pot, etc.