Secret World Of

[Oswald Lemus]

RagnarTrnquist led development of the initial game for Funcom.[2] The Secret World uses a subscription-optional, buy-to-play business model, requiring players only to buy the game with no additional subscription fees, with additional benefits to those members still paying a subscription.

Unlike many other MMORPGs, there is no need to stop to use most of a character's attacks and abilities; as a result, combat is faster and movement-based. The character is free (and at higher levels, occasionally obliged) to redevelop their abilities on the go, to better prepare themselves for specific threats or better integrate into a group. Unlike traditional MMORPGs, advancement is primarily through equipment, using experience points to buy additional abilities and more powerful weapons.

The Secret World allows the player to control a character or avatar within a game world in third- or first-person view. This character can be used for exploration, fighting monsters, completing missions, and interacting with players and non-player characters (NPCs).

The game starts with the player choosing a default "dimension" while playing solo. This also decides which battlegroup the player is placed in within Player versus Player battlegrounds. The game makes use of a single server technology that allows players to meet up with people from any of the different servers, both in regular gameplay as well as instances and dungeons.

The Secret World character starts the game by joining one of three "factions": the Illuminati, the Templars or the Dragon. This determines the character's home city as well as a set of faction-specific missions and their allies in PvP.[4] After choosing their faction, the player is taken to the character creator where they can choose their character's gender, height, face, hair, makeup and clothing.

The game offers players a choice between tab-targeted combat or a more action-based combat where the target is selected with a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Abilities can be activated by pressing a certain hotkey and most abilities can also be activated while the character is moving. The player can choose from 9 different weapon types, divided in three categories: melee, magic and ranged. Melee weapons include: blades, hammers and fist weapons. Magic weapons include: blood magic, chaos magic and elementalism. Ranged weapons include: shotguns, pistols and assault rifles. Note: After the game relaunched, the player may only choose from a few predefined classes.

The player can wield two of these weapons simultaneously and is also allowed 7 active and 7 passive abilities at a time. Active abilities are further divided between builders and consumers. Builders build resources either on the target or the player, which are then consumed by a consumer ability. The amount of resource consumed then decides the amount of damage that the consumer ability does.

The game has a total of 525 abilities which are stored in an "ability wheel" that allows the character to change their class and weapon types, as well as customize their character's roles, at any point in time.[note 1] This differs from traditional MMOs that lock the player to a class at the initial character creation phase. There is also an auxiliary wheel which includes a different type of weapons, referred to as auxiliary weapons. These auxiliary weapons can be unlocked by playing specific missions and they allow the player to add an additional active and passive ability for this auxiliary weapon. A total of 5 auxiliary weapons have been released: flamethrower, rocket launcher, quantum brace, chainsaw and whip.

Abilities can be further improved by augments gainable by doing a specific set of missions referred to as scenarios. Augments are divided in four categories: damage, support, healing and survivability. Augments add direct increases to abilities such as increasing a certain stat or effect for this specific ability. Completing issue 11 also unlocks a special "ultimate ability" that does a high amount of damage to up to 30 enemies in a 9-metre radius. This ability has to be recharged by killing mobs and can only be used on a mob once every ten minutes. Ultimate abilities have been disabled in PvP.

The missions come in several varieties. The main plot follows a faction-driven quest storyline. Characters can also take on a main mission, a dungeon mission, faction-limited side quests, and three open side quests. Some missions involve fetching items or fighting monsters; others include a variety of puzzles that are quasi-alternate reality games that require "searching the Internet" for clues with an in-game browser.[4] Investigation missions have players find facts and solve problems, and differ from the hack-and-slash missions. Sabotage missions require players to navigate areas, preferably without being spotted by enemies or automated traps.

The Secret World also supports groupings of characters called "cabals", each made up of members from a single faction, although many players have opted to develop their own off-game groupings to unite characters from different factions.

The game has four main modes of Player vs Player (PvP) content; The Fusang Projects, a perpetual PvP zone based on capturing and holding "Facilities" against the other two factions, El Dorado, a timed "capture the flag" style match with four "relics" that must be controlled to gain points for the team, Stonehenge, a timed "king of the hill" style three faction match with 5 players per team, and Shambala, a two team faction independent "team deathmatch" type of match. The Secret World PvP awarded "White Marks of Venice" which could be exchanged for "Black Marks of Venice" at an exchange rate of 100 to 1. Currently, however, the game has eliminated PvP specific currency, and PvP minigames now issue Black Bullion and Marks of the Pantheon just the same as dungeons and missions. The only exception for this is the Shambala minigame, which also awards special PvP specific signets that can be bound to gear.

In the game, the player's character, living in the present day, joins one of three world-controlling secret societies attempting to repel, mitigate or exploit the attack of malign immortal beings in coastal Maine, rural Egypt, Transylvania, a quarantined section of Tokyo, a utopian community outside South Africa's Cape Town and (planned) a section of the river Congo; and to advance their society's agenda over that of the others.

The setting is inspired from horror fiction and folklore. Novice players begin in a New England, then move to Egypt, Transylvania and then and ghosts, and then Tokyo. Mission content bleeds into player faction headquarters in London, Seoul and the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, and into the game's transport network, along the subterranean branches of Yggdrasil in Agartha.

The game is set in the "modern day real world" but also incorporates pieces of ancient mythologies, real and alternative history, urban legends, and pop culture, and ties them into an original backstory. The latter is said to go back in time for 100 million years and encompass extinct ancient civilizations.[2]

The players will assume the roles of supernatural heroes who participate in a "future war between good and evil", fighting dark monsters that threaten the modern world. Trnquist identified the genre of the story as dark fantasy, featuring vampires, demons and zombies. The player is free to travel across different locations of the world (both real, like London, New York and Seoul, and mythical, such as Agartha, the legendary city located within Hollow Earth[7] and the Hell dimension) and even in time, to pursue the overall plot and investigate new mysteries in connection to the dark invasion. The overall plot has a conclusion but the designers also leave room for future issues and expansions.

A bee flies into the character's sleeping mouth one month after an occult terrorist attack in Tokyo subways. In dreams the character is offered survival of the fast-approaching End of Days in return for service to an Elder God, while a good and bad angel advise the player to defy the god or else make wary use of it. The character awakes with magical powers which the character spends a week learning to control before being recruited as an agent either politely by the Templars, menacingly by the Illuminati, or incomprehensibly by the Dragon. The character then travels to London, Brooklyn or Seoul to receive training and endure a variously-induced hypnotic flashback of the Tokyo disaster. After choosing weapons they are sent to the first of several supernatural disaster zones around the world to advance their society's interests.

The first three playfields are on fictional Solomon Island, Maine, walled off by occult fog and besieged by zombies, with heavy influences from H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King (references to horror writings such as Edgar Allan Poe's and King's include "Flagg's Pharmacy", the "Overlook Motel", "Jack & Wendy's Bed & Breakfast," and an occupation of the town by ravens with unpleasant habits. NPC have Kingian names like "Creed" and "Bannerman"). Scandinavian "Draug" undead and ancient Mayan invaders, some human, begin to reveal the legacy of an ancient war fought on the mountain to control what is beneath it. A black liquid called the "filth" bubbles up from beneath the mountain, rapidly corrupting the minds and bodies of all creatures who contact it and gradually revealed to consist of the dreams of old gods. The player's investigation centers upon a man calling himself Beaumont who is working with the world's most popular New Age cult, Morninglight, actually bent on feeding the world to eldritch beings. Also present on the island are the Order of Phoenician Sailors, a resentful global pirate/mercenary army, and the in-house soldiers and scientists of Orochi, the world's largest tech conglomerate. The player gradually discovers the legendary identities of both Beaumont and of a sword which, brought by fishermen to the island, initiated the horrors there. Forging an alliance with the island's Native American community, the character enlists ancient powers to defeat Beaumont. Dungeons accessible from the island include: the site of a capsized tanker further offshore haunted by a small Cthulhu avatar; a part of the Hell Dimensions where a human bent on redeeming Hell is held captive; and the island's ancient past where the war over the mountain is fought.

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