Not the usual type of darkside game I play but I'm giving it a try.

It set on modern earth but there are monsters. Don't know if all characters start in England, or just the Templers. But quickly moved to New England to clean up a mess left behind by the Illuminati.

First thing you do at character creation is choose a faction, Illuminati (too dictatorial for me), Templars (seems like the middle ground) or Dragons (too chaotic for me). Each has an introdcutary video. First two in English, third in Japanese with English subtitles.

After picking faction you pick gender and appearance including cloathing. Then you pick class, which shows different cloathing and weapons. In game you have the option to keep starter clothes or switch to class outfit. I kept the starter clothes after all I went to the trouble to pick them. After entering your name and starting the game you get a cut scene which leads to tutorial missiion in a dream. When you wake up someone is at your door.

For Templars a woman hands you an envelope and says you have the choice, throw it away or follow its instructions. Of course your automatically follow the instructions which lead you to London and a large fancy office. The Templar's use magic to put into dreams to learn about past events. Templar leader is a black man.

For Illuminati its a f bomb dropping man who doesn't make it sound like you have a choice but to follow the instructiosn in the envelope he hands you which leads you to New York. Illuminati uses drugs to put you in a hypnotized state, without your permission, so you can live out past events. lluminati leader is a foul mouthed white woman (apparently Illuminati can't speak s sentence without the f word.

For Dragon a tattooed man appears and knocks you out. You wake up in a hotel in Seoul where a woman seduces you. She vanishes off camera but its implied she did something sexual and that some how causes a vision of the recent past. Dragon leader is a woman in green.

I watched a Youtube video showing all three. All three show what really happened in Tokyo an event governments and the media called a terrorist attack. It wasn't, unless terrorists control the super natural.
All three groups have one thing in common they all want to save "humanity" but don't care about individuals. They don't seem to understand humanity is an abstract only individuals are real.

Traveling the earth the three factions don't use airplanes they use a magical transport station in the "hollow earth". All three use the same place. There are observers from all three monitoring the place.

Apparently there weren't originally classes, you picked your weapon in the faction's training arena. Now you pick a class at creation and the training room gives you the two weapons your class uses.

Once in New England you meet a cowboy who claims to serve "a higher authority" and is not connected to any of the factions, he sends you on your main quest which branches off into sub quests from other NPCs. There are also side quests.

Quest give faction points, xp, money and a box that gives a random item, a weapon or jewelry. If the item is one of your two weapons and its better you can equip it. Could equip a different weapon but you've had no skills for it. If you dont want to equip the weapon or jewelry you can either destroy it to upgrade the weapon your using or the jewelry you are wearing. or you can keep it in inventory to sell. So far I've mostly used the items to upgrade my equipment. jewelry. gives you extra health and energy and ups other stats.

There are daily challenges, kill so many foes, do so many main quest, so may side quests and upgrade equipment so many times. After completing all 5 you get 5 bonus versions which double or triple the numbers. I completed all challenges Saturday without finishing the quests in this New England town.

Some quest point you to an exact location some a general area. The more annoying ones (for me) tell you to follow something. The follow the ravens was particularly annoying because it 2am the game actually goes dark and you can't see black birds (ravens) on black dirt fly into a black sky. Even when its light if you blink you'll miss where they flew off to. Oh and its timed. Four separate times you have to follow ravens and if time rounds out you start over, fortunantly just at the point you failed not at the beginning of the whole chain. Still annoying and I'd have skipped it but its part of a chain of quests, have to complete it to be able to do another quest from same person.

Seems to be one of those games where I'm always a level below the main quest so have to do side quests to level up. Most individual monsters not so bad even if a level or two above me but mobs of foes that are two levels above me are lethal. One quests goal is simply to reach level 12.

This first location is Illuminati territory although so far I've only met one character who knows that and he seems to assume I'm on the same team. Since my character is a mute he doesn't correct him or lie to him either. He just listens and leaves.

I choose Trickster class as it was listed as the easiest. Trickster uses chaos energy for magic attacks and twin pistols when he's out of energy. Some monster die faster from magic, some from bullets. There are other shooting classes as well as melee classes using swords and sledge hammers or fists (brass knuckles).

Most of the monsters at least in this part of the game are zombies. Although there are some strange creatures from the sea as well.

I wont play any more today. I don't do horror movies or games on Sunday.

Welcome to the world of myths, that are real!

I spent maybe half a year in just the first town, because I wanted to level up, before entering the next.
The next is quite hard, if you only do the main mission.

I picked sword and chaos, because it hits really hard.
You can always change weapon, if you don't like what you picked.
Eventually you'll have unlocked everything, so you can switch to whatever weapon you want any time.

The Secret World has a different naming system. You give your characters a nickname, a first name and a last name. When you see other players running around you'll see them under the nickname.

Etienne "Torriki" Martel Torriki= Japanese Engrish for tricky

image one: no hat or glasses
image two: hat and sun glasses
image three: Trickster outfit + hat and sunglasses
image four: army jacket and cargo pants reward by two quests + hat and sunglasses
image five: mummy costume

At the moment he's actually running around in a variation of image three, no hat. Until I decide to put him back in two.

Apparently the three secret orders are not very good at keeping secrets. Seems like everybody he meets knows he's from one of them and that he has magic powers.

Etienne has a pet eagle and a dog.

I was down to one quest (I think) in the first town but it was to do a dungeon. I was level 18. A higher level player led me through it. I got off a couple shots but he did most of the killing. He would stop and stand by the chests so I would be sure to get rewards. And he gave me a couple items. I used most of them to upgrade my existing weapons and jewelry. Not they're all level 20 and I need fusion objects to upgrade them to blue. After which is purple. Similar color scheme to Guild Wars except blue and green are reversed,

Secret World Anniversary T Shirt

Its Anniversary Week. Players get a t-shirt. And apparently a bee hive which I have to figure out what it does.

Sounds like you are having a good time, Guybrush