Where do you go after Conan The Barbarian? To a contemporary conspiratorial supernatural setting with a cute girl and a horrific monster, of course! “A world where magic is real and monsters roam…” Funcom’s next MMO is The Secret World, and it is revealed in a whirl of internet magic beyond the jump. Not revealed by us, of course, because we’re too wee, but by the all-seeing eye of GameTrailers. There’s two bits, so watch the first one first, as it’s got the beautiful Ragnar “Dreamfall” Tornquist talking about his creation. “Fight rising darkness!” Anything for you, Ragnar. “This is an MMORPG without classes, without levels, this is completely skill-based,” Ragnar, now you are teasing us! You naughty beast!
That looks fucking awesome.
Obligatory cinematic:
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zombies, vampires and demons? Assault rifles and Shotguns and swords and magic?
It doesn’t sound very creative or cohesive, but I’ll wait and see what comes out the other end of the dev cycle.
zombies, vampires and demons? Assault rifles and Shotguns and swords and magic?
It doesn’t sound very creative or cohesive, but I’ll wait and see what comes out the other end of the dev cycle.
I’m an unashamed Ragnar Tornquist fan. He does atmosphere and story like no other (even if the ‘game’ isn’t always the strongest part). I will buy this. I will buy this so hard.
I like how he spends about two minutes drumming it up and then point blankly says “the players will have to go out and kill monsters” with “special powers” like “assault rifles and shotguns.”
WELCOME TO A NEW ERA OF VIDEO GAMING, GENTLEMEN
So, wait a second. When he says skill-based, does he mean that the RPG system will revolve entirely around putting points into different skills/levelling up skills by using them? Or does he mean it will depend entirely on player skill, as in, it’s an action game?
Welcome young man, I have a mission for you. You have to kill 30 horrific monsters and bring me their ears or something. In return I’ll teach you the magical eyepoke ability which will decrease the chance of a monster hitting you by 15% for 7 seconds, does not stack with shotgun bash and pixie powder abilities.
It’s funny was driving me nuts thinking the girl in this teaser looked familiar… then i realised she kind of looks like Abbey Brammell at times…
“As an aside, are there any MMOs outside of UO and Meridian 59 that use entirely skill-based progression?
Darkfall. Recently released fantasy MMO based entirely around skills, has no classes and it largely focused around pvp (and a hardcore pvp at that). It’s a real bugger getting the game at the moment though, the shop still only opens sporadicly and I hear most copies sell out within minutes. Well that’s what happens when a small team in europe put together an MMO I suppose.
Still, I feel that people fawning over the fact that this Secret World game is skill based should be made aware of Darkfall, what with it being a skill based MMO that’s already out (if you can use the online shop at 5 pm GMT on the 9th of April that is).
“Skill based” – My take on that was initially whats know as ‘twitch skills’. As in the same thing an FPS game is.
Also got half way through the comments and noones said it yet so:
ZOMG!? Consoles are *%&$! This game has been ruined by being dumbed down… [10 minutes passes] OMG you people are are retarted!!!!1!!pi
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Anyway on a more serious note – MMO on a console might mean it does rather well. I have a feeling its a wait and see.
Currently we have no details on how the game plays which is often the problem. The setting looks cool – reading Nightwatch at the moment so it chimes with that (quite a decent book, fast moving not the best but entertaining). However beyond that you can’t tell anything…
Damn it Stupoider DID say it before me…
Well my faith in humanity is restored.
The first thing that occured to me (but I’m not the first to say so here) is that it sounds a lot like the World of Darkness, you know that thing owned by White Wolf publishing. You know those guys owned by the EVE developers now, who are developing an MMO in that setting.
So two developers pretty much using the same setting for an MMO, except one owns a publishing company with a long history of publishing that sort of setting. HRM!
Whatever happened with that ‘Underworld’ movie law suit? It was well grounded I think, and if it got results then I should say it’s very likely we’ll see a lawsuit from CCP.
It’s a shame really, even though it’s a total ripoff I’d like to see what Funcom does with the concept. We can’t have too many cool modern-day supernatural MMOs, seeing as there’s presently no such thing on the market.
So, it sounds like a World of Darkness-style setting. Quite a bit like that, in fact. But presented better. Don’t mean to diss Vampire: The Masquerade and its cousins and descendants or anything, but yeah, it looks like “World of Darkness, but better.”
Which sounds awesome.
EDIT: Curse you, Stromko.
Conan didn’t inspire confidence in me, but..
Interest peaked.
Oh and speaking of modern day mmo’s where you can dress any way you want.. where’s APB?
The thing is conan was a great game… for 20 levels. Then it was absolute balls. Given another year perhaps the whole game could have been like those 20 levels and we would be salivating over this as we will when the Blizz MMO gets announced properly.
Ah, good show Ragnar.
MMOSMG: Massively Multiplayer Online Smoothie-Making Game.
Woop. Want.
Also, who knew I could gain special powers by just going out and buying a shotgun.
Much as I love Ragnar, this really is just a video of him getting over-excited about things. Maybe he should team up with Mr Molyneux?
Even with that though, I got the distinct impression that this isn’t a game that will bring much new to the table. Even when he’s trying to sell the game on atmosphere, he spends a lot of time talking about killing monsters and shotguns. It sounds like just another MMO, only with a different setting. Speaking of which, it’s a really odd choice of gametype/setting to combine. So there’s this world that noone knows about, only every other person in the game DOES know about it? *eyebrow* As more than a few others have said, why an MMO? If the answer is “Because they have the potential to make giant mountains of money” (fair enough), then why this setting that purports to make the player unique when they quite clearly aren’t? If just seems strange.
It’s easy to understand why Ragnar like to use the whole “dark days are coming” line a lot, I mean if I was named Ragnar I’d probably reference Ragnarok a lot myself.
Still, so clichéd, I’d respect it more if it was presented closer to the idea of the movie “Nightwatch”, where it’s more like a continuous battle that’s been going on for centuries rather than “before it was fine, now the bigbad comes, and we need you to go collect 10 demo-taur hooves…”.
Also, I’m gonna pimp a bit more Darkfall again, just google that shit and you’ll come up with the goods. I ain’t played it, I’ve followed it and it’s ticking some of the boxes that are making people touch themselves in this thread and in the post. Especially as it’s a skill based mmo AND a skill based mmo (pump stats into skills and you have to aim/time your attacks, good twitch skills will help a lot).
Fucker should be working on Dreamfall Chapters, not this shit.
He should be working on TLJ 3 not another MMO, please Funcom work on TLJ 3, Please.
This describes exactly what I imagine CCPs WoD will be…
I’m watching this one carefully.
(also: cute asian chicks with burning tattoos and swords FTW!)
I don’t see why people are comparing it with WoD so much… Both have real-world settings with supernatural elements, but the way they work is vastly different. The “Secret World” in TSW doesn’t exist within the real world but sort of in parallel to it. FC have spoken of portals, secret locations etc., which probably means that you have to set off from the safety of the real world to find “adventure” (in the old pulpy sense, like 1930s fiction). The “World of Darkness” otoh exists WITHIN the real world – you can’t get away from it just by jumping through the portal back to mundane reality. Plus, in CCP’s game you’ll most likely be playing a vampire or werewolf, so you’re a MEMBER of the “secret world”, not some jumped-up human with superpowers who invades it and treats it as a dungeon-crawl. In Funcom’s game, vampires are just mobs – in CCP’s, they’re PCs and NPCs too!
Personally, I find the WoD setting much more promising for an MMO. It does sound like the “secret world” of the title will be just a place you go into to kill mobs and get loot. I’m sure Tornquist will put a great overarching storyline to it, but, as people above have said, it could be just as compelling if it were a singleplayer game. The WoD game, however, is a world in itself, with its own little silly rules that make no sense in real-world terms, but allow CCP to build lots of interesting game mechanics into it. Stuff like not being able to use your powers in Masquerade locations (or suffering a penalty if you do), or faction-based PvP, or control of territory, all that’s stuff’s built into the lore, and if CCP take advantage of them properly it’ll make for a very interesting game where you’ll really be playing against other people (instead of just with them).
I’ve always liked him, now it might get unhealthy. Yay skill based. If that means something even exactly the same as the way UO managed skills I’ll be happy. E.g. bored with being a mad meditating wizard, click meditation to drop, click polearm to rise. Start practising. Woosh a good fighter who can throw mad spells around but cannot recharge them quick enough except to use in emergencies. At last! I hope this works.
Ragnar “Dreamfall” Tornquist = Hawt
Some seem to consider AoC’s only sin being lack of polish and lying/lazy development. Which is ridiculous, as the game is flawed in so many ways right from the core design. It is to me an obviously compromised initial vision combined with a severe lack of touch and occasional blatant incompetence.
Compared with the very admirable Anarchy Online it was a leap back, but hopefully the spark still burns and i’ll assume the best.
Don’t hold back on the your analysis of AoC’s core design faults there chief.
@ The Fanciest of Pants, I’m also waiting for APB. That character creation demo was great.
Not really an AoC thread is it. But the mine analysis might well consist of an instanced world, half-assed combat system, crap class design, being yet a classic grinder..
Meh, i know i sound like a prick, if you actually want my opinion, it’ll be done elswhere. Otherwise i’ll just conclude the game was found regretably lacking.
@Larington: I’m not really dissing on the words, I’m dissing on the fact that there is nothing to show. You can *say* whatever you want, but until you got some gameplay trailers I’m not really all that interested, much less enthusiastic.
constantine : the mmo ?
Holy fucking shit that looks absolutely amazing
Well from looking elsewhere, it looks like those who were thinking SKILL meant reflexes and so on are at least partly on the money, since he’s been talking about how the game’s aiming for an action-adventure vibe, with character advancement meaning becoming more versatile rather than more nails. Sounds quite interesting actually, provided they can manage to make interesting action-adventure environments out of the real-world hubs as well as the instanced mystery locations, and hire genuine cryptographers and puzzle designers to make the puzzle/investigation side of things a little bit more than match 3 or door/key puzzles. That’s really the most interesting part of the game – especially in an MMO, how they’re going to get around people begging for help because they’re stuck somewhere, and a constant flood of spoilers on the forums. Which would undermine the whole point of the thing
Does this one still have a single-player mode (assuming it ever really had one to begin with)?
From Wikipedia: “Tørnquist assured that the game can also be played in single-player mode, should a player be uncomfortable or unable to play with a group. According to him, the game is story-driven and there will be an overarching linear plot, as well as numerous side-quests, ranging from investigation to sabotage and hunting, since diversity of the gameplay will be another central point.”
Is this still the case? If so, I might actually care about this. If not, then it’s just another MehMehOh, as far as I’m concerned.