The Secret World MMORPG

Tpek · July 17, 2012, 02:38:48 PM

Quote from: Nefaro on July 17, 2012, 01:48:43 PM
It doesn't really push me into playing it, either.

Must be my apathy towards MMOs these days.

The stories & settings are fun, but most of the rest hasn't really inspired me to play every free minute like they used to.

Indeed.
It just keeps occuring to me that all those good MMOs would have been far better as Singleplayer games with MP and CO-OP options included.

Nefaro · July 17, 2012, 06:31:01 PM

Some character creator fun for you guys... I enjoy giving my characters a theme. ;)

Here's Travis "Bob-D" Bickle, my latest creation.

;D ;D

I think the Templars are too goody-goody, though. Prolly fit better as a Dragon.

LongBlade · July 18, 2012, 12:48:43 PM

The game went live today.

Tpek · July 18, 2012, 01:40:48 PM

Quote from: LongBlade on July 18, 2012, 12:48:43 PM
The game went live today.

Eh? The game went officially live on July 3rd. And Headstart started on the 29th of June.

LongBlade · July 18, 2012, 01:42:58 PM

Quote from: Tpek on July 18, 2012, 01:40:48 PM
Quote from: LongBlade on July 18, 2012, 12:48:43 PM
The game went live today.

Eh? The game went officially live on July 3rd. And Headstart started on the 29th of June.

Bah humbug. Got an email indicating it was live...(and why players love it). Apparently the fine print wasn't read.

Sorry.

Silent Disapproval Robot · July 19, 2012, 11:42:33 PM

Well there definitely seems to be a conspiracy afoot to keep me from playing this game. I bought it off Gamersgate yesterday but when I tried to create an account, the Secret World registration page kept trying to charge me another $49.99 for the game. Took 45 minutes on the online chat system to get the issue sorted out. (The webpage wasn't redirecting properly and I had to insert my user key into the URL in order to get the game to register.)

Downloaded it overnight and fired it up this morning. The menu overlays in game were flickering so badly, I couldn't even make a selection. Some google searching and I was able to edit the DX11 .exe game file in order to run the game.

Created a character and started to play. I got about an hour in when the screen froze, a loud rumbling noise came out of my speakers and I was forced to reboot the PC. Played for another hour and I had another hard-lock and was forced to reboot again.

I thought it might be my POS AMD 7970 video card as I am having the same issue with Shogun 2 but when I went onto the Secret World forums, i found that a lot of other people with both AMD and nVidia cards are having the same problem.

Nefaro · July 20, 2012, 11:13:23 AM

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on July 19, 2012, 11:42:33 PM
Well there definitely seems to be a conspiracy afoot to keep me from playing this game. I bought it off Gamersgate yesterday but when I tried to create an account, the Secret World registration page kept trying to charge me another $49.99 for the game. Took 45 minutes on the online chat system to get the issue sorted out. (The webpage wasn't redirecting properly and I had to insert my user key into the URL in order to get the game to register.)

Downloaded it overnight and fired it up this morning. The menu overlays in game were flickering so badly, I couldn't even make a selection. Some google searching and I was able to edit the DX11 .exe game file in order to run the game.

Created a character and started to play. I got about an hour in when the screen froze, a loud rumbling noise came out of my speakers and I was forced to reboot the PC. Played for another hour and I had another hard-lock and was forced to reboot again.

I thought it might be my POS AMD 7970 video card as I am having the same issue with Shogun 2 but when I went onto the Secret World forums, i found that a lot of other people with both AMD and nVidia cards are having the same problem.

Did you try setting it to run in DX9?

I've had an issue with the DX11 mode in that it refuses to go full screen without me forcing it to manually, and then it'll give me a crash error when I exit the game. But it hasn't crashed or anything while I was playing it. I tried DX9 mode and didn't have those issues. Then again, the lighting wasn't near as good either. :-[

Using my old HD5770 and it's been fine other than the engine-typical texture loading jerkiness at times. Had that with Age of Conan too, so I half-expected it to still be a problem.

Silent Disapproval Robot · July 20, 2012, 11:21:44 AM

I did switch to DX9. Now the game crashes whenever I try to exit it and that somehow screws up the Win 7 shut down sequence so I end up having to go through the BIOS when I reboot the machine. This game's a mess.

Nefaro · July 20, 2012, 10:09:06 PM

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on July 20, 2012, 11:21:44 AM
I did switch to DX9. Now the game crashes whenever I try to exit it and that somehow screws up the Win 7 shut down sequence so I end up having to go through the BIOS when I reboot the machine. This game's a mess.

And, surprisingly, they've fixed up the engine quite a bit since Age Of Conan. You can just imagine how crappy that was at release. The error-logging alone was enough to grind your PC down to a crawl and loading those text files would take long periods of time. ::)

This one is a huge improvement, which still has some issues. But who/what is getting them I wonder? The latest and greatest vid cards & their drivers??

Silent Disapproval Robot · July 20, 2012, 11:57:24 PM

Not really a ringing endorsement, is it? "Come buy our buggy piece of crap. It's nowhere near as bad as our previous offerings."

Nefaro · July 21, 2012, 04:35:08 PM

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on July 20, 2012, 11:57:24 PM
Not really a ringing endorsement, is it? "Come buy our buggy piece of crap. It's nowhere near as bad as our previous offerings."

".. but still buggy nonetheless!"
Heh.

I gotta say that they've managed to make the quests/missions more interesting, for the most part. I'd go as far as saying that they've advanced the bar a bit for other MMOs. If nothing else but for the storytelling outside of the typical fantasy or sci-fi drivel.

I'm actually interesting in reading the background info on these, instead of skimming down to the objective and hitting okay.

Silent Disapproval Robot · July 21, 2012, 04:45:34 PM

Some of it's alright. I enjoyed the mission about the Illuminati symbol and the Dutch painter. (Figured it all out but I couldn't find the damned access point to enter the number) but there's still way too much grind and the bugs and random crashes make playing it a chore.

Don't waste your money.

LongBlade · July 21, 2012, 06:20:18 PM

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on July 21, 2012, 04:45:34 PM
Some of it's alright. I enjoyed the mission about the Illuminati symbol and the Dutch painter. (Figured it all out but I couldn't find the damned access point to enter the number) but there's still way too much grind and the bugs and random crashes make playing it a chore.

Don't waste your money.

What a shame. I had been looking forward to this.

Silent Disapproval Robot · July 21, 2012, 06:39:33 PM

Wait until the price drops and/or they clear up some of the bugs and crashes. There are some cool concepts in the game and some of the puzzles are more cerebral than you normally would find in an MMO. I'm not really an MMO guy. I hate the grind and the endless reloading of quests, but this one's got enough that's different about it to make me want to play it.

Hopefully they can figure out why so many people (like me) are having random hard lock ups when running in DX11 and why so many others (not me) are getting huge frame rate hits that make it run at 4 fps.

(and maybe learn Morse code. God damn that was an annoying puzzle! I must've listened to the transmission over and over again for 20 minutes and still couldn't keep up. I ended up using my iPhone to record it, then play it into a Morse code app that translated it for me.)

Nefaro · July 21, 2012, 08:33:28 PM

LOL @ the morse code one.

I'm actually not into puzzles too much, so if those investigation missions' clues are too much of a pain, I'll just hit 'B' for the in-game web browser and find a guide on how to finish it. ;) IGN has a nice spoiler section for it's missions, as does another fan wiki.

I really want to check out the PvP but I fear that you gotta be max-level to compete. Anyone know if that's true?