Hey there TA faithful, I thought I'd drop in a new thread based on the new MMORPG that's gotten its hooks in me. (Yes, I've played others.) The Secret World!
Dark days are here and the world as we know it may never be the same again. Imagine if every myth, conspiracy theory, and urban legend was true. Imagine if your worst nightmare came to life. Imagine a world where vampires hunt for mortal blood in dingy London nightclubs, where werewolves lurk in the sewers beneath Seoul, and where the undead prey on the living in the shadows of New York City. In The Secret World, everything is true.
You start off making a character for one of three ancient secret societies. You may join the Templars in London, the Illuminati in Brooklyn, and the Dragon (woot) in Seoul. Once your character looks however you want, it treats you to a little cutscene.
You don't have to view the faction video before making a character, they just did in this youtube vid. They finally get done fiddling with their character around 10:03.
All the expected MMO standbys are here. Dungeons, PvP, fetch quests, ect. There are also a bunch of neater quirks like an in game web browser, which comes in real handy when you need to hit google for the investigation missions, and it seems there's even MORE new content on the way since the July 3rd release. Another unique element is the lack of a tradition leveling system, though your strength is still easily scalable. Through experience, you earn Skill Points (SP) and Ability Points (AP). AP goes into your cool anima powered abilities and are purchased in a wheel menu.
You fill the inner part of the wheel and gain access to the more powerful outer wheel abilities. There's no "level cap" and if you really wanted to, you could fill this entire wheel. You may also notice a "Decks" tab on the far left. It contains some prebuilt ability decks for you to buy that fits a certain role (Tank, DPS, Healer, or Support) and rewards you with a new clothing item if you fill them all out. Filling in the inner circles also give you a clothing item like my cool trench coat for filling out shotgun. I don't know yet if you get clothing for outer circles but it wouldn't surprise me.
I suppose this leads to combat, which you really have to stick to TBH. It's really easy to just say "This is weird and I don't like it" at first, bunch after your first hour or so, you'll really get a feel for it and it's quite enjoyable after that. The weapons also handle quite differently which is refreshing and makes trying new combat styles interesting. Especially because you may equip two weapons at once and synergize them. The image above shows a fist weapon and chaos magic combo, a very effective DPS build. Here's a shot of my own character [shotgun/elemental] in combat.
Equipment isn't handled in traditional fashion either. Instead of body armors or kevlar vests they allow you to look however you like. Your equipment in the game is handled through magical talismans your character carries somewhere out of sight.
I've found delving into this odd, supernatural world to be quite entertaining. The newby areas are pretty outrun with zombies for the most part, but I'm begining to see a bit more variety in hostile mobs now. As for the dungeons, very challenging and well designed. I'd start handing out buddy codes to hand out to you all, but sadly my only one has been claimed. If I get more I'll be happy to give them out to anyone who replies to this thread. See ya on the other side. 
Yeah, me and Temple Cat are bros with the Sasquatch Chief. It's no big deal.
Thx Hazel and Costa