The Secret World : Beta Weekend Gameplay

May 14,2012 - by 37

Did you enjoy the TSW open beta weekened? We know at least one of you did! And he sent us the videos he streamed during the test. I have to warn you, the audio is semi-decent but the gameplay is worth the effort. Enjoy!

As always, don’t forget to thank Medik, the guy who took the time and put effort into recording his gameplay and was also kind enough to share it with all of us.



Rumors have it that Cpt. BetaCake was once a mere mortal. In human years he would be 28 years old. Nowadays, he finds peace in sharing gaming news and leaks.

  • Ombladon

    No offence but the game is crap i didn’t get past the first 10 minutes and unninstaled the game:) Good luck funcom but this will fail like age of conan.

    • Shatteredbeta

      Why are you trolling at betacake? Seriously.
      It takes about an hour to get to the first zone, nobody cares about your 10min -> Quit -trolling :>

    • Mosaic

      It’s funny because although your a troll i almost quit after , 10 minute. I hated London. but I’m glad I didn’t because after that Kingsmouth showed me everything I want from an mmo and more.

      • Brightblue

        Same here.
        I’m glad I tried again, once I got to King’smouth it got Better.
        The story depth is refreshing, to say the least.

        -But I’m hoping the character animations are indeed placeholders.

        Otherwise, they’d better get some animators from this decade,lol.

        I saw they were hiring Motion capture People, I sure hope they don’t think that alone will make for better animation.

        Time will tell,though.

    • Shad3y

      because you suck like this guy.

  • MrGrimord

    I had a blast this week-end. The storyline is one of the best of any games I have played yet. Immersion is intense and cutscene are really good (Bioware could learn a things or 2). Can’t wait for next week-end.

  • TCO007

    Ìt’s not going to be a perfect game (it really isn’t), but the story, atmosphere and great characters are enough to make me come back. Ragnar strikes again!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1673440178 Prime Time Rodney Crawford

    All of the starter areas are really boring, and the story really isn’t that coherent. At some points the story becomes gibberish, and it becomes hard to stay focused or keep interest in it. Once you get to Kingsmouth the game starts to pickup. But I feel that a lot of players are not going to make it out of their factions starter zones, because those areas are so boring. After a week of playing in the closed beta I have no desire to keep playing this game.

    Solving puzzles and mysteries where fun, and a cool concept, but I don’t think that many people are going to want to put in the foot work that is required to solve a lot of them. For me the game just got a bit to repetitive, I felt that I was doing the same thing over and over again. The kill 10 rats quests are there, as well as the fetch quests just cleverly disguised. Anyone that’s been on the mmo block for awhile will pick up on this instantly.

    The main story was good but a mute character kind of kills the immersion, and it feels like your character is out of place through out the whole ordeal and doesn’t have a clue about anything. In the story department Bioware and TOR wins this hands down. TSW wins in the department of trying something new and going away from the WoW formula. There are instances and your classic tank,healer, dps roles so the trinity is still there.

    I found myself exploring in this game as well, something that I really do not. It wasn’t something that I though was required, because I was just going off since I found the game world interesting. Later on that exploring and paying attention to my surroundings paid off, because it helped me as far as solving puzzles went. The downside is that there are invisible walls, so if you see something in the distance you cannot go to it.

    Will I buy this game? No because like I said I lost interest after one week of playtime, the story doesn’t do enough to keep me engaged, and my character is a mute. Having 7 active abilities at any one time makes game play to limited and repetitive. I am not a big graphics person, but in this instance the graphics looked very dated, and character creation options were very lackluster.

    • VDSalad

      I’m glad someone has taken the time to actually post what they disliked about the game, instead of just saying “It’s terrible.”

      I didn’t have too many problems with the opens that I ran through (Illuminati and Templar), and it really doesn’t last that long. If someone is not patient enough to get through that area, then they’re definitely not patient enough for some of the “puzzle” quests, and probably should just stay away from it.

      I did all(?) of the puzzle quests in the Kingsmouth Area and loved each one. Though, Kingsmouth Code was a little tougher than it should have been, all 3 of the quests a group of people and I did with no outside help (sans the required information from Google).

      I agree that the mute character does somewhat kill the immersion with the cutscenes, but it’s really no different than any other MMO that isn’t TOR/GW2.

      I didn’t run into any invisible walls at all, but that’s mainly because I stuck towards where quests were and really didn’t explore much. I can sort of see why that would put people off, but they have to put limitations in somehow since it’s not a seemless world.

      As for the combat/abilities, the main problem is the starting area (Kingsmouth) is easy, and the abilities you start off with are generic. This makes it seem like a simple “Equip abilities as you go” “Spam abilities”. I’m not saying that it completely changes once you get further in, but there is definitely some depth to your spec, and ‘rotation’ once you start getting into second tier abilities and creating specific builds.

      Personally, I’m looking forward to the game and am still buying it.

      • MrGrimord

        About abilities, they state that the real fun comes with the second tier of abilities. They were locked during this week-end.

        But yeah, the game has flaws, combat could be more fluid and get better anims.

    • MrGrimord

      Hmm not sure if we played the same game really.

      When I read “and the story really isn’t that coherent” I knew that your review must be taken with a grain of salt. It’s prolly it’s biggest force whatever if you like or dislike the game. And even if you are stuck with 7 skills, you always use the same few skills in any game anyways.

    • Mosaic

      I like your post to a certain amount as alot of your points are very valid and you didn’t just say i hate this game its all shit (like alot of people), this doesn’t mean that I agree with you not liking this game but I like that you have logical arguments. I agree that the starting areas are bad (like London starting area, kill me now) and saying that it picked up when you left (which is 100% true and I agree that some people won’t make it past zone 1). About people not wanting to solve puzzles, you’ll be supprized it actually interests alot of people, and for those who it doesn’t interest, that’s fine they just wont play. But i agree it will turn some people off. I disagree about story but that is subjetive, I don’t feel your character needs to respond (i found the responses in tor very unneeded and annoying), however its just personal preference, i thought the story was the best part for me. I explored heaps and the only invisible walls i found were in the sea and going through a tunnel which you are obviously not meant to go into (although i did only play for the weekend not a week).

  • Bgtgb

    I loved it. I really, really did. Best fun I’ve had in an MMO.

    The atmosphere was truly exceptional. Kingsmouth felt like a real town, it was spooky as hell but beautifully gloomy.
    The story, as far as I got, was really good. I’m usually the first one to skip cutscenes, but this time they had me glued. Really cinematic, really interesting. A bit of Stephen King, a bit of H.P. Lovecraft in there. Buffy the Vampire Slayer came to mind. And maybe some weird David Lynch movie.
    Best story I’ve seen in a game period.

    Questing was good, too. We get to focus on one thread at a time, which works great. I know there’s lots of players complaining because this isn’t your typical MMO, where you go to a quest hub and take a list of chores to do. And mindlessly just grind them out, like doing a shopping list.
    But this is something different.

    Oh and the investigation missions! They require you to actually think and observe the world around you. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it was really challenging and immensely rewarding.
    Smart man’s MMO this is.

    Combat was a good indication of things to come, and I really liked what I saw. Developers piped on the forums, and said that the abilities available in beta are just the tip of the iceberg. So if you think the combat is boring and “just pressing 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2″, you’re playing it wrong.

    No levels, no classes means you’re focused on playing the game. Having fun now, not thinking about the fun you might have. When the developers say the whole game is “end game”, it’s actually true.
    And a big boon when you have friends coming in the game in a later stage. Just pop over to Kingsmouth and help them, without being over powered. All of the quests are repeatable to boot.

    Everyone in my guild is just buzzing about the game. And a local gaming shop said they had an explosion of pre-orders after the beta weekend.

    This will be a major game. Not a mass-market appeal for wow kiddies. But a good solid cult classic which will add more players over the years to come.
    Best fun I’ve had in an MMO in years. Kudos, Funcom, kudos.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1673440178 Prime Time Rodney Crawford

      I agree with you, this isn’t a pickup a list of quests and go grind them mmo. For those that do not explore they will miss the majority of quests in an area, and also become stuck on a lot of puzzles. This game requires you to pay attention, and you will be running all over the map trying to complete them. You also have to remember the location of some quests,so that you can return to pick them up later. There are two quests in Kingsmouth that had a lot people stomped “Something Wicked” and “Kingsmouth Code”.

      Those two quests required outside of the box thinking and paying attention to previous locations visited, if the area had been explored thoroughly. The like or dislike of the story is subjected at best, some will like it others will not. I did not dislike, but it wasn’t the best story out there. It just goes to prove some of the theories me and my buds have been talking about over the years, about secret groups pulling strings, all over the world.

      • Zack Jensen

        Are you serious? The story in Something Wicked was awesome and well Kingsmouth was like 99% investigation.

        In the end the overall opinion of the game is really positive. Most of the people that played the beta loved it and I’m the same. However I do think that this game is a niche game and more for the mature kind of gamer that likes to take time to explore things.

        One of the things that I loved the most is the ability wheel. Even though there was only a limited number of skills in the beta it took me hours to figure out a good build and the right way to play it. Some people did not take a closer look and ended up deeming the combat system “WoWlike”. The UI is a little fucked up, but this should only be a matter of adjusting. I see no problems there.

        • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1673440178 Prime Time Rodney Crawford

          Yes I am serious, there were people that couldn’t figure those out. The clues are not really that clear, and like I said if you didn’t explore there was no way of knowing what the quest was asking. I got hung up on the part that ask about flowers blooming out of season and bees buzzing, I only got that one because I went back to London to buy new clothes.

          • Zack Jensen

            Well there is a reason those quests are called Investigation quests and especially the clue you mentioned were quite easy to figure out. It barely took me 5 minitues to figure it out. Also there are more than enough ppl willing to help you out with clues.

  • Massimo Virgilio

    So far I am not that impressed but I have been expecting it since some time. Anyway I’ll try it regardless, a new game it’s always fun to play. To be honest my curiosity stands more towards what we will expect to find at the end of the game. It’s still a mystery.

  • Brigade

    Been playing for a few days now and I have to say it much better then i hoped for.
    But there are MAJOR issues.

    The people playing the weekend beta are playing a whole different build then the closed beta server and just for kicks i hopped on the weekend just to see. I was a little pissed.

    The weekend beta ran so much better then ours and looked better too. After the closed beta patch yesterday things looked ….a little better but ran like shit.

    Here are few bitches some folks had. All are legit to the people that have them but imo some of them seem to be fanboi’s who know that on release this game will ” steal” from there player base of the beloved mmo.

    Please take this with a grain of salt.

    First the Graphics.
    From the company that gave us Conan i expected more. I will agree that the graphics did feel a little dated but…BUT then i look at the marked and see whats out there and its really not that bad. You got A; the cartoon games ie WoW and SWTOR B: the realistic games Like conan and C; you got what i call the hybrids ie Aion GW2 and Tera. They look really good but got that anime look to them. A lot fo people are upset by this and by all means they have every right to be. In 2012 i just expected more.

    Next the Animations.
    WoW….really.
    There bad….The character models dont move like a real person should. Some of the animations are ok but some look….clunky. The strides when they run look over done. Also the stances. If your a caster you run around with your arms out and fingers curled and it looks really stupid. The casting animations look the same for most of the spells. My wife has an elemental deck and i was watching her cast spells and 5 of her spells had the same animation but did different thing…meh. I will say i love the animations for chaos magic and fist weapons.

    Combat.
    This was a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed the fist weapon and chaos as well as healing. So far i have gotten atleast one of the outer rings on each skill filled and find some of the spells/attacks are lackluster at best. The just dont seem that powerful. Granted i think i have gotten to like q8 great but even still you replace an old one for a newer one thinking its going tobe this HUGE uprgade and its not.
    I think some of them need to be reworked. A 36 or 50 point ability should be fuckin awsome. I got a few and was like SHIT why did i even bother with this. Then theres the targeting issue. Man, no matte what i did I have been having issues with this for …what going into week two. Sometimes you target just drops. I made a pistol elemental build and i would just be pressing one button and not moving or anything and my target would drop OR worse change to a set of mobs that i wasnt even attacking. I had to map my target group member to my mouse buttons because some time i would click my ass off and it wouldnt select the person i had targeting.

    Quest.
    I really liked them. I love that theres a game that FINALLY makes you have to think. This is something the MMORPG world needs. The mindless kill/gather/escort/defend shit needs to go. Im not saying there no place for them but there should be more then just …that. The big issue most people had with questing was the quest log…or the amount of quests you can have in your log. I dont mind this but you should be able to pick up a quest that a investigation quest and have a sabotage quest as well. I didnt understand and,still dont, why one type of quest would make you have to pause another when the quest didnt have anything in common and werent the same type. Also the quest really didnt explain very much and sometimes( most of the time) the quest giver would go on and on about some shit that had NOTHING to do with the quest. The wolf guy in SC is famous for this. They prattle on for 2 mins about purple lights and people losing themselves and when you get the quest its something like go find a book. Meh maybe thats me being nit-picking bitch but its hard to get involved with a quest when the quest giver is talking and it has nothing to do with the quest. Now the quest really get interesting around the Academy. It get really good cuz that place is FUCK UP.

    Another thing about quest, well more about getting help on quest. Next time your in the weekend beta and someone asked for the answer for a quest dont be a shit bag and post it in general chat. Just send them a tell and let them know in general chat you sent them the answer in a tell. So many of the new testers and the weekend guys did this and didnt give 2 shit about the folks that want to figure thing out for themselves and ruined the immersion.

    Crafting……Didnt do any in the weekend beta but its bugged in the closed beta. Fucking irritating. I would love to talk about this because i found it to be kinda neat but it only worked 30% of the time.

    Knowing what the fuck your doing.
    LOL this game explains NOTHING. The little tutorial with the skill wheel you get at in the starter cities isnt shit. It explains next to nothing. Doesnt tell you you can use two weapons. Granted from the videos i seen here i know before we go into the closed beta you could use two but lots of people didnt. People didnt usderstand the Sp system eather. The dumped a ton of points into there weapon and wouldnt equip any new talismans or anything. There needs to be some Major tutorials in this game before launch.

    Well at anyrate im going to stop there even though i have a lot more but all in all Im very happy and expect to be playing this game atleast for the next 6 or so months. These some issues and its not perfect but IMO its much better then anything out there now.

    Hopefully we get Archeage

    • Zack Jensen

      Most of the animations are placeholders and will be changed by the time FC releases the game. Also you seem to forget that you are playing a beta, It’s only natural that there are some issues, missing tutorials and it is mentioned that you can equip 2 weapons. Pretty sure the guy with the eye patch.

  • Metalhead9278

    I didnt play the beta but im interested in the game, can someone give me their objective opinion on the combat?

    Was it exciting?
    Impactful?
    challenging ?

    I can get into almost any game but the combat needs to be good to keep me there

    • Mosaic

      Combat was extremely interesting. You had 7 abilities usable at a time, along with 7 passives. You had a massive field of abilities to choose from and you fill these fields how you want. Its lots of fun sorting out which abilities your gonna use and making your build as good as you possibly can. It would take my hours playing until you find your perfect build, and because of this your skill rotations etc. will always be changing and you really can play however you like. The combat is how a game should be: easy to learn difficult to master. Instead of a ‘mana’ system they had free abilities which gathered like combo points, and then big moves to use these points. This all means you can make the comat easy and ineffective or difficult and super effective, depending on who you are. Some people say it’s boring combat (probably because they make really easy inefficient build or ways of playing) but i think they got combat spot on.

  • Ombladon

    I’ll tell you why i didn’t get past the first 10 minutes of the game.

    First the story the blue pill red pill from matrix all over again, a very cheezy story.

    Second the graphics (I have i5 2500k @ 4.5ghz, gtx 580 8 gigs of ram) game all maxed out all the charachter models looked like they drinked jack daniels and smoked tar since the age of 8.

    Third and this killed all the mood for me (and i unninstaled the game) is the walk animation i mean it sucks hard , the walk animation in Bomberman and Mario brothers looks much much better then the one in TSW. You look like sliding on the pavement not walking. The street looked like all chris angels doing magic tricks. Come on after all this years only Wow and a handfull of mmo’s got the walk animation right (and i’m a wow hater:P)

    And that’s all folks.

    • Mosaic

      This guy (mostly) doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How is the story bad? This game has the best story/cutscenes ever in an mmo, I hear lots of people complaining about character models and animations but even massive haters of this game all say it has good story, I loved the story it was simply amazingly done with super memorable characters. I never noticed the walk animations (i never do) and thirdly oviously you played a female. Men were fine females did look bad, however everywhere I look i see funcom telling us not to judge character customization as it is gonna be better at launch, so hopefully there will be better characters you can play as at launch, oh and with that graphics are amazing the only thing that look bad are the character models (and a select few animation, however not all if them).

  • Ombladon

    Come on Michael Jackson all over the place moonwalking animation. Okey the models may be improved but still the curent ones look like crap compared to any other mmo . And the story memorable? who was i? Rambao playing with fire in my room? Who was the first chick? Trinity or Morpheus? And the second conversation (the one with the cops was so bad and boring it almost killed. Tell me how am i hating a game wich i played 10 minutes? I don’t wanna play this game and i’ll go back to bomberman wich i may add has much better animations then TSW .

    • Shatteredbeta

      Why do you even play games?

  • Ombladon

    Why do you even download crappy games you wanted to say:) Hell knows wanted to try something new and fresh:) Not a corpse

  • Ombladon

    Why did i get my post deleted? all i said was i will not post here anymore:) lord …

    • BetaCake

      You and the other guy were pointlessly flaming each other. This is not YouTube. You don’t like the game, its fine. You don’t have to be a massive pain in the ass about it.

      • Ombladon

        And i admited that and i said i’m not commenting anymore:) so i stoped being a pain in the ass. No need to delete stuff

  • KP

    Too linear atleast in the beggining just like swtor.

    Too clustered, i want an mmo not a tunnel shooter. Too many load screens.

    Buggy. Ugly animations. Boring combat.

    Ill try it again if i get into another weekend. But as with all things funcom this is getting a pass for now.

    • Mosaic

      It is too linear exept it’s not. Yes there is a super linear story line but you don’t have to play it (exept for about 20 minutes in london) The zones amazingly allow for alot of flexibility so you can go exploring go hey i might pick up this quest, pretty much do whatever you like. Yes alot of people will follow the main story but funcom made the right choice is not making this compulsary. When playing the full game you will be able to go to whatever zone you like whenever you like. Sure you may die if going to a really hard level straight away but you are allowed to do it. Being too linear was what I hated, however The secret world does not have this problem.

      Too clustered. No simply no. This is one of the least clustered mmos that’s come out in the last couple of years actually. There is sooooo much room for exploration which is super encouraged. They got this spot on.

      Buggy, a few people have said this. I never saw it.

      Ugly animations. I’ll give you this one but just this one. I liked most of them but there were some very… bad ones.

      Combat. You’re doing it wrong. The great thing about this game is you can tell the people who know what they’re doing from those who don’t. The ones who do are saying the combat is awesome, I made a great build which is tricky to utilise but really good are the ones who know what they’re doing. The ones who say it’s boring, I’m just button mashing need to learn how to play.

      Random question: Did you ever get to kinsmouth because pretty much al the points you made were correct in the tutorial area in London (which I hated personally they must change it!) When you get to kingsmouth just about none of your points are valid.

    • Zack Jensen

      It’s funny that many people didnt get the states system .. the combat is not boring at all. It’s pretty dynamic if you know what you are doing. Oh .. and you played a beta so sure it is buggy!! Most of the animations are (I mentioned that before) placeholders.

  • Massimo Virgilio

    no invite to beta yet. very disappointed considering played and paid AOC sub for 2+ years. remember re-subbing just to get the beta invite for the TSW. damn devil marketing :)

  • Thomas Johansen

    The open beta seems to be a marketing catastrophe. 2nd weekend they opened barely anything new except a couple of quests. Funcom need to realize people are judging the game based on the Open beta, and being in the closed beta myself I can not understand why they didn’t AT LEAST open up the amazing Polaris dungeon to the OBT folks.

    I’m having a blast in CBT and this is my favorite MMORPG, maybe even RPG period, of all time, but Funcom should be more “open” about their open beta.

  • Toggy_

    Wow i never bothered bout that game but reading thpose hate / love comments really make me want to try it :) kinda like the swtor hype fest (game i enjoyed btw) think im gonna give TSW a try.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/3JO75BNS43WDETCNCO7F7XS6Q4 jo

    this game is just abysmal.

© 2013 BetaCake : MMO news and leaks. Served as intended. Fresh.. All rights reserved.
Back to top