Funcom Announces That The Secret World Has Gone Gold

Written by: QuintLyn Bowers (@QuintLyn) | June 12, 2012 3:00 pm

34 Comments

The Secret World‘s third beta weekend event is almost here and Funcom‘s pretty happy.

In an announcement on the Funcom site, the company boasts a beta signup of 1.3 million potential players. This number is said to shatter “all previous company records including that of its previous MMO Age of Conan“.

This weekend’s event will be the third in a series of beta weekend events and will feature all three factions and their starting areas as well as the entire region known as The Savage Coast. There will also be two dungeons to explore: the derelict cargo ship “The Polaris” and “Hell Rising” on Solomon Island.

The event will open at 9am Pacific on Friday, June 15 and last until 11:59pm Sunday, June 17.

The company has one last bit of good news for players waiting on the game: TSW has gone GOLD and production of the physical units has also started. This means that unless something crazy happens, we will be seeing Early Access on June 29th and launch on July 3.

It will be interesting to see what — if any — significant changes have been made to the game since the last beta event.

For those who haven’t had a chance at a TSW beta event yet. There are a few sites giving away keys:

I will update the list as more are added.

Funcom Announces That The Secret World Has Gone Gold

3:59

The Secret World

All Aboard The Last Train to Cairo in The Secret World

Watch the new trailer for The Secret World Issue 6, 'The Last Train to Cairo'.Read more »

2 comments
The Secret World

The Secret World Issue 6 Drops Tomorrow

The Secret World Issue 6 hits "newsstands" tomorrow for subscription players and on the 16th for all other conspiracy theory gamers.Read more »

1 comment
The Secret World

Joel Bylos Takes Helm As Creative Director Of Funcom

The Secret World's Game Director has taken on the roll of creative leadership of Funcom's centralized live team.Read more »

10 comments

http://twitter.com/ron6405 mouse

well secret world have good idea but its not a great game. the voice acting is poor and if you get lost some mobs can crash you in instance and its a game with no lvl. I didn’t like how some weapon feel like shotgun has feeling of no recoil. that’s just my opinion.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
  
  Well bugs are fixable, much easier to fix than game mechanics anyway. The weapon “feel” could be considered an artistic bug.
- Tom Hayward
  
  I found the voice acting to be surprisingly good and fit the game very well. Combat is definitely lacking, but they’re claiming they’ve “updated” it, so we’ll see how that goes this beta weekend.
- Alphamax
  
  Loved the voice acting myself, but I can see how actual acting might turn people off? Maybe bad voice acting is so entrenched in the game genre that anything outside of that box sounds ‘off’ to people.
http://www.facebook.com/omniara2011 Kyle Ivester

The thing is not all of those signed up are going to buy it. Like mouse I think it had potential but it just does not follow through.
http://profile.yahoo.com/3JO75BNS43WDETCNCO7F7XS6Q4 jo

time to put it into perspective. TSW got only about 500k beta sign ups in 2012. they got well over 500k sign ups last year, search it if you like. they are combining the number…acting like there is a sudden and current huge interest in the game.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
  
  Errr, how do you think other games count their beta testers? It isn’t a conspiracy, it’s commonsense. Congrats, you just used it.
Revanhavoc

No wonder, the beta was free. Soon they will understand that’s why it got 1.3 million and if they want those numbers in the real game TSW will have to be F2P soon.

Please keep us up to date about any changes that come to the combat.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robbert-de-Wilde/1806039882 Robbert de Wilde
  
  Yeah I don’t understand companies these days, a new MMORPG should be Free to Play no matter what. It’s safer and in the end makes you a lot more money. Haven’t they learned from AoC?
- Tom Hayward
  
  Yep, I really hope they’ve improved the combat system at least a little. If they have, then this game just may be a sleeper hit.
http://www.facebook.com/dogbestfriend Wayne Buller

lol at the other comments. TSW is meant to be different, not a WoW/EQ clone like GW2 or SWTOR.
- jayremy
  
  Don’t forget Rift, though I like Trion, can’t ignore the facts.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    Rift makes me so sad. I think it’s a good MMO, but no one wants to copy Rift.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson
  
  How is GW2 a WoW clone?
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    Yeah, WoW 5.0 will not require you to put talent points in a lower tier to unlock higher level talents. That so last year.
    - Odeezee
      
      really? first, GW2 traits are nothing like WoW talents and second, having tiered skill augmentation does not make something a WoW clone seeing as these are staples of MANY different game types, but please by all means you go ahead and build that strawman, lmao. thanks for the amusement though.
      - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
        
        Lol, the point was that GW2 had to go back to a tier system “like” so many others. On my Charr Elementalist I don’t recall using any tier one traits, I simply filled them out to get traits I wanted “Ice Bow” and all the elemental glyphs. I do suspect a few weeks after launch, the theorycrafters will have the “perfect” trait tree for each profession an players will simply copy them from each other.
        
        It really shows GW2 is like so many game before it.
        
        I am liking the new WoW 5.0 beta talents. Gives me alot of choices on setting up my Resto Druid. The old system only left me with one or two points to customize my build. For the new talents the only choice I had to go with was Tree of Life form. A resto druid should always have a Tree of Life form.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Bob-Dobalina/100002971552895 Bob Dobalina
        
        GW2 combat is nothing like WoW let alone being a clone. I will give the OP a point on SWTOR. It is pretty much a Star Wars skin on top of WoW.
      - Torben Rasmussen
        
        vanilla WoW that is -,- lags pretty much every feature wow have, and it still runs like a PoS
      - Arkanthos
        
        TSW also has tiered skills and talents as i saw in the beta, or am i missing something new in bwe3?
    - Old Ben
      
      > WoW 5.0 will not require you to put talent points
      > in a lower tier to unlock higher level talents.
      
      Not true, as anyone can check by using an on-line talent calculator (ex.: mop [dot] wowhead [dot] com/mists-of-pandaria-talent-calculator).
      
      Not only are tiers locked to your level, but you don’t even have access to multiple talents in a single tier (pick one talent from tier 1 and you can”t pick any of the others). It’s a lot more restrictive than the system in GW2.
      
      Which doesn’t mean that tiers in WoW don’t make some sense, while tiers in GW2 are a very stupid decision, because the whole leveling / powering up approach is fundamentally different.
http://profile.yahoo.com/THJWE4XEXAMAPW3CUGPFYCUDHE Prime

AWESOME
http://profile.yahoo.com/THJWE4XEXAMAPW3CUGPFYCUDHE Prime

Since SWTOR has < 1mil subs now… YEA….TSW all the way.
jayremy

I see it holding over a couple 100 k subs during and after launch, the game has a good enough amount of uniqueness to HOLD players, unlike SWTOR. The gameplay combat was not intriguing so most people will know from the start whether or not they will like the game.

Must note people signing up for betas aren’t to be confused with as guaranteed or existing subs/pre-orders. Likely the number of sales will be much lower, I’d wager about half or a little less.

I wont be playing this game because the combat felt way sub-par, but I cheer for them because I like the concept very much, no classes or levels is FTW. The Sci-fi mystery world, 3 factions and much more.
Camzillasmom

It’ll keep me more or less amused till GW2 is out. Then it will be one of the MMOs that I’ll leave to die.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robbert-de-Wilde/1806039882 Robbert de Wilde

If this game was free to play, I’d buy it. Hell I’d probably even buy stuff from the store. But I’m not gonna commit to a monthly fee when I don’t know if I will play it for that long even. SWTOR all over again. Paid a month for freaking nothing.
- Jado Cast
  
  That’s exactly how I feel, and I think many others as well. But don’t let your heart be troubled, it will be free to play soon enough. ;-)
Odeezee

but as many have already said, TSW has some great concepts, great atmosphere (albeit a really lifeless and static world-pun unintended), interesting quests and contemporary setting. but it has very poor combat mechanics and visuals, lackluster sound design to further aid with atmosphere, really poor content delivery system which leads to all quests becoming fed-ex quests that just send you all over the map numerous times, no fast travel or mounted travel to alleviate the constant aimless and very forced running, really uninspired PvP delivery system and a VERY heavy drop requirement crafting system.

they tried though, but in this day and age you cannot afford to be so unpolished and then charge a sub/cashshop especially in light of SWTOR and with a B2P game like GW2 on the horizon it will be an impossible “mass” sell.
- Alphamax
  
  The counter point to that is that TSW has pretty standard MMO combat mechanics (except that you’re never really locked down but can move during combat), that already with bw3 many animations have been upgraded, that many of the testers held up the way the content was delivered, quest wise, as a positive and that they’ve gone beyond the standard PvP content in games like SWTOR and WoW by adding truly persistent areas.
  
  TSW definitly wont be contending with WoW, but for a couple of 100k gamers it’s looking pretty nice. There will always be GW2 for those who are looking for the next big hit =)
Tig Bitties

They dont have shit until they actually CHARGED for the pre-orders.
jayremy

Hopefully they get the combat more intriguing, definitely too late for graphics, but a sad story to why they have bad graphics (this game was supposed to be released nearly 2 years ago if nto for low fund issues). The game has a great environment, but anything visual outside of that kind of sucks.
mad.martha

From my Beta invite E-mail (and not mentioned in the video)…

“The game has received significant enhancements since the last Beta
Weekend, with improved content, gameplay mechanics and performance. In
addition you will get to experience the updated combat system as well as
full DirectX 11 graphics! We are very excited to share all this with
you.”

So…. hopefully a better combat experience (only time will tell) and better GFX.

[MM]
Peter Jeaiem

I look very much forward to this game, having played all open betas. Like others here I am baffeled by the business model though.
http://twitter.com/LaucianNailor Allan Dixon

Puzzling Business model….but additionally a shocking rip-off for potential UK subscribers that are going to be charged over $20 a month as opposed to the equivalent of the $14-99 that a US subscriber would pay.

Another example of EA/Funcom shafting UK gamers

Funcom Announces That The Secret World Has Gone Gold

All Aboard The Last Train to Cairo in The Secret World

The Secret World Issue 6 Drops Tomorrow

Joel Bylos Takes Helm As Creative Director Of Funcom

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sign in to your account