Last weekend was the third open beta weekend for The Secret World and unfortunately, convinced me that the game is unplayable. We pre-ordered the game based on the strength and uniqueness of the IP and the belief that Funcom had learned from past mistakes. We both have Grandmaster packs to the game, and I at least, feel like an idiot for having faith in Funcom. For years the pictures, above and below,
and the catch-phrase, “play how you want, look how you want” has been out there by Funcom. However, it was confirmed this weekend by Ragnar Tornquist, Creative Director and Senior Producer, that there would be no sliders (post no 157 which is on page 8) in the game for character creation. Basically it all boils down to their team is too lazy to design (post 56, page 3) for any variation between characters.
I’m sorry, he can claim it isn’t laziness all he wants but it is a flat out lie. The first open beta weekend, hell even the second, I made excuses for Funcom and still had faith that character creator would be fixed by launch. I am supposed to be able to look the way I want, so why wouldn’t it be fixed? Apparently, Funcom believe that men and women are equally tall, equally, slender, and equally ugly. There are only so many head choices and your head choice determines your skin color choices. The facial features themselves (eyes, nose, jawline) are equally limited. There is no height or weight slider. Hell, there are no sliders at all for any feature. You can’t be old, wrinkles or scars are non-existent. There is absolutely ZERO excuse for what passes for hair options. They are all god-ugly awful and basically variations on the same, short choppy haircut – with the exception of the mohawk styles. Hubby tells me that the male choices are equally limiting, although it has been confirmed that Funcom will at least be giving the male characters the option of being bald.
I played the beta last weekend, for twenty minutes. I may like everything else about the game, but I can’t stand the created characters. They are ugly. They are all the same height and weight. There is nothing distinctive about them. They are so seriously flawed that looking at any character I create in a cut scene means I immediately stop playing. Those are not long term selling points for any MMO, let alone and MMO that is supposedly AAA and is launching with a subscription fee and a cash shop at launch. Funcom stockholders should ditch the stock as rapidly as possible prior to the start of early access on 29 June 2012. Once the closed beta NDA is removed, there will be a lot more people saying similar things I imagine. I can’t believe that closed beta testers haven’t been making a stink about character creation for a very, very long time now.
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