"All alone, thank god."

[greygirlbeast]

I believe that it's become necessary to wake this journal up and press it once more, day to day, into service. Simply put, I cannot recall the flow of days without the aid of some written record, and my attempt at returning to a handwritten journal is proving futile. I miss a day, then three, then five, then...here I am back. I can't stand

Comments

[jacobluest]

Does The Secret World have strong narrative / character RP options? I'm in the market for an MMORPG to play, but I'm a little disillusioned with the "kill five boars...then kill five more boars" of LOTRO and the "read all the wikis and still get ganked by a Finnish banker" of EVE Online (although it has a special place in my heart). I looked it up and the premise seems fairly compelling!

~Jacob

[greygirlbeast]

Does The Secret World have strong narrative / character RP options?

I think the writing (and voice acting) is marvelous. And it has probably spawned the strongest RP community in MMOs. But I admit I don't know what you mean here by "strong narrative / character RP options." It is still a fairly straightforward MMO. Though there are investigation missions, and the game has a tendency to emerge in the real word through things like Twitter, you also have the kills missions, etc. I rarely play the game, proper. I just use it as an RP vehicle. The actual game mechanics are clunky, and the avatars are really poorly animated and designed.

[jacobluest]

I'm working this summer on generating dynamic quests based on NPC personalities (imagine!), recent local history, and lore for the NPC's region in a large MMO. Ever since I started spinning up brain cycles on this area, I've been...saddened by what's considered state-of-the-art for mainstream game narrative. As such, I'm on the look-out for MMOs that can accomplish good narrative while still providing the quest hooks us players need to satisfy the "XP gain / level up / etc" mechanics we all know and love. It seems like currently (to paint in broad strokes) the choice in games is good writing or good quests. But for me, writing always wins out. I'll check it out...thanks!

~Jacob

[greygirlbeast]

Yeah, you should check it out. I think it's a game that manages to succeed despite it's many flaws. Given what's out there, it's at the top.

[greygirlbeast]

An afterthought.

Truthfully, I have only a little interest in the narrative of an MMO, since I
'm in it to create my own stories with other players via RP. I've been in TSW now for two years, and I've only played a small part of "the story."