Funcom is thrilled to announce that the hugely anticipated modern-day massively multiplayer online game ‘The Secret World’ officially launched worldwide today. What many are calling one of the smoothest launches in MMO history actually started Friday last week when Early Access began, opening the doors to the online world of myths, legends and conspiracies for all pre-order customers to enjoy during the weekend. Launch happened smoothly and hordes of gamers have so far enjoyed ‘The Secret World’ and its fresh take on the MMO genre.
The first press reviews are starting to surface, and so far the reviews are very positive. Hyper Magazine has given the game a 9/10 score, saying “… this could be the most important MMO since ‘World of Warcraft’”. NowGamer awarded the game a 8.3 out of 10 score, praising the game’s excellent graphics saying the “… DirectX 11 visuals challenge the limits of what we’d credit an MMO as capable of achieving.” Other reviews hitting today include 5/6 from both VG and Dagbladet, two of the biggest mainstream newspapers in Scandinavia, as well as a 9/10 from PC Powerplay. Looking at the incredible number of comments on forums and social media channels, feedback from players has also been overwhelmingly positive so far. The game is receiving praise for breaking new grounds for the MMO genre, combining technical and gameplay innovation with superior high quality production values.
Zadig wrote on Jul 4, 2012, 09:26:
The stories and writing are very good. This makes the voice acting much better since the actors are speaking naturally rather than trying to read comic book dialogue for 14 year olds (a la Bioware). I was very happy to see they've removed leveling like EVE, and adopted the Guild Wars deck system. The tactical choices of 7 active & 7 passive skills is much more interesting than the drudgery of managing 82 skill bars.
Fion wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 14:09:
But I agree, Funcom does have a reputation. They used to be my favorite MMOG house, mostly because of Anarchy Online (which is noted for having one of the worst launches in the industry and the most bugs in it's first six months than you could ever foreseeable count), it also had an amazing setting and very innovative features that are considered not only common but necessary in modern MMOGs (instancing, link-items-to-chat, dynamic spawning, 360' flight, just to name a few).
One has to wonder though why Funcom has had several years to fix fundamental (as Mac put it) features of their latest game AoC such as the sieges when you have other companies like Arenanet with not only working sieges, but extremely fun, polished, deep and strategic server vs. server (vs. server) PvP months before the game even launches. PvP so good it not only rivals DAoC's RvR, but surpasses it in many ways.. and the game isn't even out yet!
It makes me think many of the great folks at Funcom somehow don't know what they are doing, or the leadership doesn't have an even remotely defined structure or list of goals. It's just.. baffling. That said I wish them all the luck in the world. I've been interacting with many of the great folks there for ages (since early beta of Anarchy Online) and most are dedicated, intelligent and very creative.
NKD wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 14:39:
Funcom is one of those studios that I think would do a lot better if they had more money. They have fantastic game design ideas, but their stuff always feels incomplete and unpolished, even after a long time in development. This makes me think they are just operating on a shoestring budget, at least in MMO terms.
Meanwhile you have companies like Bioware who get unlimited money thrown at them and they still can't come up with something other than "Let's copy WoW."
Trevellian wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 12:11:
I beta tested this game and thought it was one of the most uninteresting, boring MMOs I had played in years. How anyone could think this game was important to the MMO genre is beyond me. It wasn't even impressive graphically, the character models alone looked amateur and had clunky unlifelike animations. I can usually find something redeeming in most MMOs after a few weeks, but with this one the most redeeming moment was uninstalling the beta and playing something else.
Steele Johnson wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 12:29:
All you have to do is watch the youtube gameplay videos, and it will convince you not to play it. Same boring story-driven, repetative combat crap that you've all played before. Sorry, A different theme and voice acting isn't enough (see kotr) to win over gamers who want a player-driven dynamic experience that next gen mmos are leaning towards. Funcom fails again, so don't be fooled by the early reviews.
Skip ahead to 5:48
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE5MGysyfJM
deqer wrote on Jul 3, 2012, 13:00:
The market for MMOs is becoming saturated. We now have--what--20 MMOs now? ...