The Secret World: Beta Weekend 1 Final Impressions

 

Zombies on the loose, the dead walking the streets, and strange creatures from the sea and yet Pam the Clam stands faithfully there for all the tourists to stop and get the picture snapped with her!  Just one of the many and varied interesting things we saw on our weekend romp through the open beta this weekend.

There were good and bad aspects to the beta, with the good far outweighing the bad in our opinions.  So let’s break down the lists:

The Bad

• Character customization: limited in beta and the first item in the known issues for the beta.  So, I  was expecting it to be awful.  It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t pretty either.  As posted previously, character creation needs improvement greatly.
• Infinite log-in loop: happened for me whenever I had a character crash in London.  Logging that character back in would immediately crash the client again.  Many a character was prematurely deleted before their time as a result.
• Stability: Hubby had massive client stability issues resulting in hard locks of his system.  Once he resolved his driver issues and reduced motion blur to low his stability was rock solid. 
• Lag Spikes: my frame rate was a pretty solid 50 fps, and his around 60 fps.  However, every once in a while the game would hit a spot and lock up momentarily and then come back immediately.  During those spikes, frame rates would drop into the single digits.

The Good

• Questing: I cannot begin to describe how incredibly well written the quests are.  They are immersive and are far beyond mindless fetch and return quests.  Skipping dialogue and cut scenes in this game will hurt your ability to complete quests.
• User Interface: It is simple, minimal, and clean.  The screen isn’t cluttered with brightly colored objects which detract from the environment.
• Atmosphere: Kingsmouth is one spooky town and the music and graphics really capture that for the player.  Put your headphones on and the surrounding environment comes to life.
• Ability Wheel: First impression is that every skill is pretty much a duplicate of the other, and then you begin to build synergy between weapons and you realize it is far more complex than your first impression lead you to believe.

Is there room for improvement?  Yes, there is always room for improvement and Funcom is working on those issues.  Things like skill animations, jump animations, and the impact of combat are all issues that Funcom is aware of, working on, and the biggest complaint on the forums this weekend.

We are not cancelling our pre-orders and are both extremely pleased with the state of the game.  We both believe Funcom has a lot of long nights between now and Early Access on June 15th but there is every indication that they are working those hours.