I’m still playing TSW, but only in a duo with a friend and the solo bits I need to finish out the main storyline. This is one of the poorest technical implementations of an MMO I’ve seen: the patcher crashes regularly, the graphics are mediocre (clipping issues, slowness even on my GTX 295 that runs my other games flawlessly), bugs are rampant (for instance, one of the recent patches broke every single mission I had active). The game design is below average in my opinion, too; the ability wheel is a very cool idea, but once you’ve played with 2 or 3 different weapons you begin to realize they all have one thing in common: most of the abilities are badly underpowered and thus useless. It’s tough to put together a solid solo build, as most abilities seem to be geared toward making you into DPS, heal, or tanking. Grouping is a pain in normal missions; often you stumble across portions that must be done solo, and some missions won’t count progress for both players so you end up doing things twice. Grouping in normal missions also makes combat too easy since nothing scales to group size. Solving puzzles in missions regularly requires you to click on some tiny little object hidden behind something or on the ground, which is frustrating in itself and made worse by the poor graphics quality. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for unfair.co which has solid walkthroughs of most of the missions.
All that bad stuff is balanced out by the best story-writing in any MMO I’ve played. I’ve played through the story in Solomon Island and Egypt, and am working on Transylvania. Norse gods and native American Indians working together to hold ancient evil below the ground? Socialist gnomes standing up to capitalist vampires? Faceless corporations polluting the world and causing major outbreaks of…disease, I guess you’d call it? TSW has all that stuff and more. All of it written well and with interesting characters. Another week or so should see me through the storyline, and then I’ll call it quits for a while, maybe come back in a few months to try a different faction and see if they’ve worked out any technical issues.
I won’t be disagreeable here, but I will say that your experience is most certainly not everyone’s experience, particularly as regards the graphics of the game.
Regarding the /chat join custom channel…I find I have to re join them every time I log in, only a small problem but sometimes I forget. I have looked for some kind of auto script that will do it for me but not found one yet.
Razgon
1984
Their engine must be getting worse all the time - I can’t play with anymore. Tried “low” settings, and the game still ran poorly - And yes, I can play every other game out there, like Arma 3 and the like on regular medium settings without issues.
I haven’t noticed any degradation at all. I had encountered some lag yesterday hunting bosses but then I realized that I had migrated to a European server and there were over 50 people plinking away at him.
I used to play TSW with a GTX 295, it had serious slowness issues with the game. Ironically, performance seemed better if you maxed all the settings.
Oghier
1987
Age of Conan had the same issue with low settings. It’s an oddity of their engine.
Razgon
1988
Yeah, sorry for the whine post - The game runs a lot better today, so it’s probably my laptop that had some issues.
Earlier today I did the quests in and around Innsmouth Academy. I’d forgotten how much fun that hub is. The three quest-givers are hilariously understated and droll, the quests are interesting and fun…and the area has maybe my favorite room in any MMO.
I know that sounds weird, having a favorite room. Even weirder: not really much of anything happens in this room. It’s easy to miss. It’s a passage to other stuff.
But…god I love that room.
It’s in Innsmouth Academy, and the only reason you’ll ever have to see this room is if you’re doing a particular quest. It takes you to this attic/annex thing near the roof of the Academy, and inside, as the shadows slant long through small windows, you see stacks and stacks of moldy books, some desks, and chairs. There are small lamps on the desks. At Ellis Library at Mizzou–an ancient and forbidding structure in the middle of campus–there were cubbies for grad students that looked like the kind of study areas you’d expect them to have…but there was this weird annex area with just ancient-looking desks and tables and lamps that I guess was for the really super-academic PhD students…and the attic annex in the Academy totally has that feel. It’s cozy and bookish and looks study-friendly, but also is kind of creepy and weird. It’s the perfect atmospheric passage (and you run through it in all of about 5 seconds unless you’re a dork like me and stop to look around) that kind of encapsulates why I love this little MMO.
So now I’m “out of love” with the game again, and just like the last time, when it first came out. After a certain point, it somehow loses me wrt the story. Everything is perfectly coherent, and the game is truly nonpariel, up to half-way through the first Egypt zone, then it somehow jumps the shark for me, the illusion goes and it’s “just another MMO”. It recovers somewhat in Transylvania, especially as you know more of the backstory.
But yeah, somehow, in some way, I’ve lost that magical feeling of immersion with the game again.
I essayed on the forums the notion that it’s the weird against the background of the familiar or semi-familiar that gives the game its initial hook. There is nothing like the whole Solomon Island run in MMO space, it’s pure magic. But then something about Egypt makes that unique feeling dissipate (even though I find the Sentinels storyline, in and of itself, one of the saddest and most moving in any game).
On further reflection, it may also be partly the build system. It’s quite intriguing when it’s new, and you imagine that the stuff deeper in the trees must be pretty powerful, but when you start filling out the trees and realize that most things are just variations on a few things, it gets a bit hollow. There’s also something depressing about the way the endgame min-maxers have denuded the system of all mystery and it’s just “damage is king” as usual (not their fault of course, it’s the fault of the design).
Comparing and contrasting with GW2 which I’ve fallen in love with again, the way each class plays is far more varied, even within classes, than any variety of build you can build with the TSW system. But then again, by all accounts “damage is king” is the rule there too (but there’s more awareness that it’s a fault of the way the mobs are, rather than the system itself - i.e. if the mobs were more complex, the “Support” and “CC” could come into more use).
I’m really liking this, but, I can’t help but feel there’s a huge missed opportunity with the newbie zone. They’ve created this really cool setting with secret societies, magic, vampires and demons, and they give us… an episode of The Walking Dead? /barf.
The zombie trope is more overplayed than WW2 shooters ever were.
I don’t know how far you’ve progressed, but I found Kingsmouth to be more interesting than it first appears.
I agree - there’s some very nice stuff in Kingsmouth that you don’t get on your way to the Police Station Under Siege. On the other hand, the game is trying to introduce a mythology that seems less accessible than ‘kill orcs and dragons’. Zombies are a pretty good introduction - they’re like the conceptual rats of early RPG levels.
There’s a whole ecology going on with those zombies on Solomon Island. It’s really quite cool.
When you know you overdid it on the character creation screen: two separate tells in two separate dungeons of “Your toon is hot.”
Razgon
1996
Woohoo! Cyborzxxx!
I’ll be on a bit later tonight btw - Is anyone still missing Polaris, since thats where I am probably going to be at either tonight, or tomorrow night! :-)
Kingsmouth (along with Savage Coast/Blue mountain) is fantastic. Just so many neat genres and elements ground up in a giant blender. I get the need to start out strong, but I wish it was the end game setting instead, as IMO the next 2 settings aren’t nearly as interesting. Egypt does get better as you progress, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Trans. I actually stopped playing the game shortly after I arrived there, it was just a let down to be fighting more typical fantasy staples as opposed to what had come before.
The writing in the game is okay. Sometimes it feels like they’re trying too hard. Maybe it’s the voice overs – it just seems like the characters ramble on and on. If there was a way to skip the VO to the next line in cinematics it would have been great.
Oh man, I loved Trans, my favorite zone by far.
I’ve just finished the nursery quest line… The secret world does good creepy.
The new issue is out! $10 for a spy themed set of missions.
