If you can find someone in a working instance that'll group you over, yes. As long as the second instance works. Or you can find someone that just completed it and knows it works willing to bring you over. I wasted probably an hour of playtime trying to do so with these quests, and that was a very unfun hour of playtime.
Actually, come to think of it, I spent an hour of play time on the bug in BM alone because I had no idea that the quest was broken (well, about half an hour of that was scouring the mob infested area, the other half was trying to find an instance where it worked). Part of the problem with the "change instances" work around is that you pretty much have to know the ending to the quest before you know to ask.
How does that equate to "not smart enough to figure it out", as you so politely put it?
How long did you leave your petitions open before deleting them? Unless I'm mistaken you can only have one open at a time, so the fact that you submitted many without a response indicates you deleted them before support got a chance to respond. I've put in a few petitions myself and have received responses to each within 24 hours (usually much sooner). Sure, the response was usually a frustrating "we're aware of it and working to fix it", but it was still a response.
So from what you've said, you only actually hit four bugged quests, and simply assumed that others would be bugged based on hunches? How many did you complete? Since there are over 50 missions just in the first area and the latest quest you mentioned is in the fourth area, four bugged quests seems like a very low proportion to me. Also, none of those quests are main story quests, so they're hardly game-breaking.
I think I can be forgiven for assuming the bugged quests are your major complaint since that's what made up the bulk of your review. Your other complaints are contained in a single off-hand sentence and don't go into specifics.
The cash shop is silly to complain about as it doesn't impact gameplay or the balance of power; it's entirely optional and only offers cosmetic silliness. The lack of hotkeys for consumables is a legitimate complaint, but hardly a major issue. The only other complaints you voiced were about the chat (which I agree is a major issue), PvP (which seems fine to me), organization of skills (which I actually like) and explanations of combat (which seem pretty clear to me via tutorial videos and the Tokyo Incident intro). Could you maybe go into specifics about what makes those major issues for you?
The Secret World gets 2 stars. Why? Because the reviewer claims TSW is buggy. And that's a "dirty secret" according to him. So why did mr. chicken give Diablo III 4 stars some weeks ago? I mean Blizzard didn't have any launch problems whatsoever, did they? This has to be the most biased and dishonest review I've ever read.
I feel like I am reading comments under a Fidgit article. People must be linking this all over.
Thanks. Lol there are very few dangers in my IT job, but slipping and falling down the stairs is apparently one of them. Like I told my boss, that's what happens when he wants me to stop messing around in AD and go help someone.
But back on topic. Yes I heard the same thing, and whenever I see someone asking for help, I invite them into group and have them come over to my instance. According to some of the people I spoke with, I have been very lucky in the quest department. Others say they have not encountered any issues with the game at all.
I can only speak from my playtime with the game, as you with yours. In mine, I have had one problem and I got around it by instance hopping.
I was quite intrigued by the game before I read that flow of silly comments.
No way I set foot in an MMO filled with such a crowd.
Why did you turn off "general chat", already, Mr Chick?
Yeah, his rent was due or whatever. If you check, you'll see he does one bad review on the 8th/9th/10th of every month.
You gotta be kidding. Rock Paper Shotgun had full-page background ads for the game and has run several features on it. Not exactly under the radar.
Keep telling yourself that, buddy. If you just wish for it hard enough maybe the problems will magically go away.
And if you don't follow RPS (which I don't, but probably should)? I wouldn't have known the game was releasing if I hadn't had a masochistic urge to re-install Anarchy Online (which lasted all of ten minutes before I uninstalled it again).
When a review is written, the score basically means "buy it or not" to me. In this case Tom played the game, got extremely frustrated by the broken quests (that aren't obviously broken because, well, you don't know if you're doing it wrong or if it's broken), and gave the game a 2-star review. 2-stars would translate, for me, into "Close but no cigar, don't buy this". And having read the review, I can see why he is saying that.
The last part of the review is a perfect summary for me as a potential customer: " The Secret World shouldn’t have been released until our implied agreement was rock solid. Because in its current state, what should have been a unique experience is instead a uniquely frustrating experience." Reading that tells me that if I'm interested in the game, I need to wait until this "pay to be in our extended beta" phase is up.
If Tom gave this a 3-star review which, for me, says "not perfect, but worth buying" and I ran into game-stopper bugs, I would be pissed. Especially since it's an MMO where I would pay retail AND $15 a month while I wait for the game to be finished.
Do MMO reviews need a "3-months later" followup? Absolutely. That goes for positive and negative reviews; imagine a 'how I feel after 3-months of gameplay' review of SW:TOR. But you can't write a review based on how the game will eventually be after it's patched or how you'll feel about an MMO after you hit the endgame (or lack thereof). You have to review the state it is in right now and your experience playing it so far.
Okay, but why ignore all the other reviews?
I totally disagree. What about the potential? This is just a review that has not understood the meaning of the game. If you take a lookat other review they highlight so many other things.
That's why you have to read the review and not just look at the scores. Tom's review clearly spells out his issue with the game (broken quests and buggy chat servers). If someone reads that and says "Oh, that's his issue with it. That's not big deal to me", fine and dandy. Buggy quests and not being able to talk to others are big deals to me though, so I appreciate them being called out.
Frankly I'm tired of the philosophy of "expect major things to be broken on release". That's what betas are for. To see that these issues were identified in beta and they released anyway, that's just selling a broken product to me.
If I bought a car and the cruise control and wipers didn't work, you wouldn't say "dude, the seats are comfy, the ride is smooth, and just don't drive while it's raining. Besides, they will fix the wiper issue for you after you drive it a few weeks".
I'll likely buy the game a month from now when it's been patched a few times. And it will likely be great and I'll be happy I waited for the initial issues to get fixed. If that happens, I'll encourage others to buy the game. Until then, are folks honestly telling me I should buy it knowing things are busted and just be happy for what works?
So exactly how many broken quests does he have to run into before he's allowed to lose confidence? Stop being silly just because someone doesn't like a game you do.
(Off topic, why isn't it letting me sign in? The little 'connect with' buttons aren't doing anything)
So the other reviewers are lying?
I filed probably four petitions over the course of playing the game, some days apart. I never received any response, nor did I get any sort of notice that filing a new petition would cancel an existing petition.
If you'd like to look at my character profile, Funcom just launched the game's Chronicle feature. My character's name is ShadowChick. You're welcome to peruse my stats over there if you need to uncover some sort of evidence of my negligence to play efficiently, sufficiently well, or just sufficiently.
As for whether my other complaints are major, I can only say that I take a game's business model, interface, long-term player vs player viability, and documentation seriously enough that I consider them serious problems. It sounds like your review would have been very different from mine, which is to be expected given that we're not the same person.
By the way, when in the tutorial did it explain penetration, glancing, focus, chains, channeling, and attack value? I must have missed that part.
Chase, good that you agree and has you eyes open. Go Amanda:)
Tom spells out why he gave it 2 stars (out of 4). Other reviewers may not agree that broken quests are a big deal. They might not care about the chat servers dropping. Their rating will obviously be higher than his. That doesn't make either review more "legit" and neither reviewer is lying.
Figured I should read those other reviews, just to see how awesome they are saying it apparently is. "Unfinished yet ambitious". "There is much room for improvement...far more potential than anything Blizzard or EA has had to offer recently". Even the "glowing" reviews mention how unpolished and buggy it is. "A game that shines but needs to be quickly polished". All but 1 of the reviews say the game needs major patching. Obviously this game needs more time to bake before someone buys it.
