The Secret World left a very bad taste in my mouth from open beta and that impression undoubtedly colored my reaction to the game when it released three weeks ago. The game has been receiving rave reviews: Massively, Digital Trends, Now Gamer, Lorehound, and finally Gamespot; I realized that it was possible I had been too quick to judge and so I fired up the game this morning for a couple of hours.
The pictures above are just a couple of the ones I took this morning. I still firmly believe that the character creation is the worst in recent memory. I will not excuse Funcom for this no matter what, there is no excuse. While the character I created this morning wasn’t as awful as on release day, she is by no means what I had pictured in my head or what I want to look at when I log-in. Short hair, horrible facial features, crappy hairstyles, and no body sliders of any kind is unacceptable to me. 
This is Pippa, and while not vomit inducing (barely) there is just something wrong with the angle of the head and neck. I will never understand why player characters cannot look like these NPCs:
I’m going to leave character creation behind before I find it impossible to climb off my soapbox filled with disappointment and frustration.
Questing, combat, dialogue, and atmosphere are all top-notch. There is a quality about the environment that sucks you in and refuses to let go. London feels like an old world city and Kingsmouth feels like Maine (one of my favorite places on earth). I didn’t do any zones other than London and Kingsmouth this morning, and barely scratched the surface of Kingsmouth.
- Combat feels much more connected than it did in betas, which I attribute to improved sound environment from NPCs.
- Quests are enjoyable and deep. Sure there are go fetch quests but there is no way around that mechanic in an MMO without a pure-grind game mechanic. The varied types of quests from investigation to sabotage will keep an intelligent player coming back for more.
- Crafting has been VASTLY improved!!!!
I can’t tell you how happy I was with the crafting tutorial quests this morning. There was a also a quest which taught you how to install a glyph, but my coffee deprived brain failed to a screenshot. - Cabal/Guild creation is simple, intuitive, and doesn’t require signatures of other players to establish.
Now for the things that were problems in beta and are still existing:
- Chat font size and color is still not adjustable by the player. Bring your reading glasses and be aware that white on gray is not your friend.
- Text menus and tooltips are still white on gray text as well.
- Character creation is abysmal
The cash store needs serious work. The text is very hard to read for description of items. The interface is user friendly but not one you want to spend a lot of time using. There is just something intangible about the cash store that feels “off” to me. There were a lot of items I expected to find in the store this morning that were missing, things like dresses, a way to gift to another player, 99% of the items in the store are character not account bound, and no crafting items.
Overall, second impression was MUCH improved from the first impression. Will it replace Everquest 2 as my primary MMO? No. Is it something I will pick-up on a regular basis and visit? Yes. In general, the game is worth picking-up and playing, especially if you enjoy horror fiction. Would I recommend it for casual gamers that don’t like to think for themselves or expect answers handed to them? Absolutely not.
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