Gone Digital: Pulling Back the Curtain

Friday was the first day of early access for Secret World. Needless to say, this weekend was full of exploration and attempting to turn back the tide of evil (pun intended). After having played through the starter area several times, I skipped the cut scenes I had seen before. I was a little miffed that they decided to complete change the model of at least one main NPC and completely remove another along with her related mission. Her removal makes some of the references made by other NPCs about her harder to piece together as being about the same person.

The main issue I (and many other players) have is the several of the missions are bugged. How the hell did these get past the betas let alone the internal testing? I have had to make a (short) list of missions I need to go back and complete when the game is updated later today/tomorrow for  release. Luckily you can invite people on other dimensions (aka servers) to your group and are temporarily moved to their server. This is one way of dealing with the bugged missions. Because, lo and behold...the bugged missions are only bugged on some servers! Seriously? How the hell is that even possible when all of the servers supposedly have the same code base!? WTF!? I did not partake of this method of getting bugged missions done nor did I petition a GM to force complete the bugged step of missions X. Instead I made a list and plan on trying again after each patch until I get them done.

This is definitely the buggiest (?) launch of a MMO that I've experienced with the exception of Anarchy Online. Hey, look! Another Funcom game. Age of Conan (their other MMO) suffered from a buggy release too, but I didn't have the problems I had with AO or SW. Seeing a trend here? Funcom puts out games with good concepts but is seriously lacking in the QA department. I absolutely love Secret World as a whole, but I can't stand shoddy programming/testing.