The Secret World is a pretty interesting MMO.

I personally love it. I like the modern theme, which is created fairly well.

The investigation missions are fun and environments, which You do Your quests in, are different enough for You to actually notice them. They're beautiful mostly. Only mostly, because some of them are scary, when You have zombies and such attacking You from every direction all the time.

For a lot of people the combat might not be good, but for me it's satisfying. I like hotkey MMOs, if they are done right, and I find this to be done well. In the beta the combat had issues, but those were fixed in full release.

Why did I give this only 4 stars out of 5? Well, most of the quests feel too generic: Kill X many mobs or gather X many items. Of course also, because the UI is sometimes confusing. Especially the inventory screen.

It's still a great game and it's not easy either, so I would recommend it to anyone, who wants to play an MMO set in the modern world, which actually gives You a challenge.

The Secret World is pretty good, but I think it's more for experienced MMO players as it's quite challenging and not particularly clear/intuitive in many aspects.

Visually it's got some great design (but poor character creation - it feels VERY limited), and the classless system is interesting and creative once you get beyond the counter-intuitive nature. There's also an interesting set up for the way it handles missions and dungeons, which can cut a lot of the running back-and-forth you see in most MMOs.

Well worth a try.

Fantastic investigation missions set in a Lovecraftian world with fully voice-acted NPCs. The Secret World lives or dies as an MMORPG by the quality of the investigation missions, and these do not disappoint. They really make you work hard to solve some of them. My biggest problem (and this might not be a problem for you, depending on play style) is that you can essentially solo the entire game aside from the dungeons, raids and lairs. Despite being a Massively *Multiplayer* Online Game there is no real incentive to actually play it multiplayer, which seems like a missed opportunity.

Pros:

- Some amazing investigation missions

- Great HP Lovecraft theme

- Lovely environments

- All NPCs are voice acted

Cons:

- Like most modern MMOs you can essentially play single player as there isn't much in the way of inter-player interaction.

- The combat is hot-bar based.

- There are still far too many kill X / fetch X quests.

Overall I should give it 3 stars, but the Investigation Missions are worth 4 stars on there own.

Quite a refreshing change from the old elven forests and run of the mill kill questing. This one I feel is more story oriented. Thanks to the good writing and voice acting, the quests feel more than just the same old boar killing you see in most MMO's.

The game world is very well put together with lore to collect and read, things mentioned in conversations and just small details in the world that come together nicely and form a believable world, each with their own history. This, to me at least, makes exploring the game world more interesting and rewarding.

Like I mentioned, the quests are more varied as there are missions which you'd normally find in an adventure game. These are often well made and can make you really think about how to solve them.

While the PvE is fun, the PvP aspect is still a bit lackluster. Not that the game plays poorly in PvP, it's all good, but there are only three (as far as I know) RvR type battlegrounds. One with a king of the hill type objective and another where you capture and hold relics to accumulate points and win the game. The third one is a more open world like scenario where players go around capturing control points and resurrection locations. While it sounds nice, it does become repetitive and mundane, really quick.

What I also like and would like to see more often, is the ability to create a character build of your own, within limitations of course. This makes trying different combinations more fun and rewarding, rather than choosing a class at the beginning and being at the mercy of the developers, in case they nerf your class of choice.

All in all, this is an MMO I have no problem recommending to anyone who enjoy storytelling or a modern horror setting.