The Not-so-secret Pet Peeves

I have been long waiting for this game.

Sadly for me, I didn't get a beta invitation in spite of having been a six-years-long loyal customer of Funcom's Anarchy Online. All was not lost, however, as a good friend of mine that is way better at using sock puppet Facebook accounts than me got invited right away, and he loaned me his account to try the beta for a while.

...and then I payed the price of high expectations.

For a game which was supposedly using the same engine as Age of Conan, it was mighty disappointing to see the pathetically meager level of customization in character creation (which is limited to a handful of options for head and clothes, no options for customizing size and proportions). A giant step -backwards- even from Anarchy Online.

Usually, this alone would be enough to turn me away from a MMO, but it's Funcom, and I love their games, so I pressed on.

The starting narrative is great, the world is dark and scary, the atmosphere is all I knew it would be. My faith in Funcom was well-placed, TSW was already everything the Vampire MMO would never be.

...and I'd have been sold into the game right away if not for what came next.

The seed of dissatisfaction was already there from the paltry customization options, but it came to full bloom as my graphics kept glitching out and all characters in the world were replaced by naked bald males just at the same time the game broke down and refused to update my mission progression and give me the next objective.

First I attempted rebooting the client (twice), and I found out not only the bug was still there and manifesting exactly like that, but also that my whole game progress had been wiped clean, and I had lost a good chunk of my life for nothing, start the quest all over again (both times).

My experience with attempting to get help from Funcom resulted in what I presented in this week's strip, and my experience asking around for help from other players was even worse. Unless the chat server was also broken and no one was able to read my pleas, the community there is even more unfriendly and uncooperative than that of The Old Republic, and that's saying something.

You suscribe to a MMO for the content, but stay for the community... and TSW fails miserably on both fronts. Content-wise, Funcom is presenting us a Beta so screwed up I wouldn't even call it an Alpha. Community wise, I might as well be playing a single-player game.

(Okay, perhaps the community is -not- worse than TOR's, at least here I didn't get stoned, tar and feathered for not fellating the game).

Making a long story short, to say that my experience with TSW Alpha was infuriating would be a crass understatement.

Hahahaa... Funcom is not the only one who loves to do that. Cryptic has been so much worse.