So The Secret World's mission system treads well off the beaten MMO path. It's pretty cool, actually, though portions of it may irritate quest-grinders who just want to blow through zones on their way to the game's equivalent of a max-level toon.
For the rest of us, there's a nifty interface, some challenging puzzles, and plenty of well-written quest text and dialogue to keep us entertained for weeks at a time.
Why should you do missions? Well, apart from the fact that they give out the game's largest ability point and skill point rewards, they're the primary thing that sets The Secret World apart from its MMO contemporaries. Funcom has poured a lot of effort into the game's backstory, and it shows in details ranging from quest text descriptions (which, contrary to quests in your typical MMO, are actually vital to understanding and completing some of the more challenging missions) to voiced dialogue to little details like pop-up phone book pages or manhole cover closeups.
There's a classic adventure game feel to The Secret World, which is no accident given the involvement of Ragnar Tornquist (creator of Dreamfall and The Longest Journey). Don't get me wrong; there are the usual MMO kill and fetch quests too, but these are fewer than you might expect, and they're dressed up quite nicely with plenty of atmosphere and a sense of purpose beyond getting to max level.
The Secret World has seven different mission types: story, action, item, investigation, sabotage, group/dungeon, and PvP. Each of these types is represented by an iPhone-style icon both on the UI's quest tracker (floating under your minimap at screen right) and hovering next to the NPC's head in the game world proper. That probably sounds a bit complicated when you read it, but the actual experience is pretty slick.
It did take me a minute to figure out that I had to re-click each icon to collapse the appropriate menu tree, but once I had that down, the NPC interface really grew on me.
Each mission is sub-divided into tiers, which consist of a series of objectives like talk to this guy, follow these clues to this location, or kill these guys. Tiers must be completed in order, and once all tiers are complete, you'll get an on-screen pop-up directing you to phone in your success to a faction representative. This is fantastic because it eliminates the tedious travel-back-to-the-NPC-who-gave-you-the-quest bollux that is so common in themepark MMOs.
Questing in The Secret World requires a completely different mindset when compared to your average MMO. You shouldn't try to finish every quest in a particular "hub" (chances are you won't be able to acquire them all anyway). Rather, concentrate on the story quest for a given area. The Kingsmouth story quest has a whopping 18 tiers, for example, and if you follow it through to completion, it will give you a comprehensive tour of the zone and lead you across other quest NPCs who will hand out supplementary mission types.
That's not to say you should ignore everything but the story quests. There are a ton of other objectives buried inside the aforementioned mission types. And while I'm thinking about them, let's go over those real quick. Rather than a big wall o' text, here's a bullet list for simplicity's sake.
Some of these missions have prerequisites (denoted by a padlock symbol). Some are repeatable, usually to the tune of a 24-hour cooldown (though this is rumored to be temporary, post-launch cooldowns may be longer). Many have spiffy cinematic cutscenes that play upon acceptance (don't skip these, at least initially, because some of them contain vital information). Funcom apparently took some criticisms on Age of Conan to heart, as these quest cinematics are evident throughout the game, whereas in AoC they stopped at level 20 aside from the destiny line.
I should also mention the quest system's limitations. Funcom has made a conscious design decision to limit a player's ability to gobble up quests and mow through them like some sort of steroid-powered MMO Pac-Man. What do I mean, specifically? Well, you can have only a single story, action, sabotage, investigation, or dungeon mission active at a given time. Item missions may be accepted in groups of three at a time. I'm not sure about PvP missions because I haven't done any yet (more on that in a later article).
It's also worth noting that you can't drop a mission. Let's say that I'm frustrated with The Kingsmouth Code investigation mission. I can either try one of the other mission types in my journal or accept another investigation mission, which will then pause The Kingsmouth Code. Whenever I feel like resuming The Kingsmouth Code, I'll need to go back to the original NPC to unpause it. If I've already completed several tiers, it will unpause with those tiers marked complete.
Now that we've got the technical nuts and bolts out of the way, allow me to give you a few impressions on questing in the game's Kingsmouth zone. Don't worry; I'm not going to spoil anything, as figuring out some of these mysteries is a large part of what makes The Secret World a unique title.
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