Not everyone knows all things about all MMOs. Once in awhile, a rank amateur joins the legion fans surrounding the MMO-niverse. In our latest look at The Secret World, we check out the game through the eyes of a n00b. See what she thinks and then leave your thoughts in the comments.

My wife’s not what you would probably call a “gamer”. Sure enough she’s played games over the course of her life, and she’s once sported a healthy (but passing) interest in social games. She’s also fond of the sort of more active titles you’ll find on the Wii and Xbox Kinect. But MMORPGs? She leaves that stuff to her husband, and rightly so. I’d never wish her the sort of unhealthy obsession with virtual worlds I find myself making a living with. I’m nerd enough for the both of us, thank you. But that doesn’t mean she’s not interested in my passion. She’s gone to events with me, taken notes at panels, and last year even met Ragnar and the Funcom crew working on The Secret World while we were at New York Comic Con.

Read more of Bill Murphy's The Secret World: My Wife the Noob and TSW.

That's a great write up. It's refreshing to get your wife's opinion on TSW. I think you should hire her to give reviews on all new MMO's coming out. I completely agree with all her points; they are very valid. The biggest beef I had was that I never spoke or had the ability to make a choice during a conversation while playing. I don't get why we don't speak in the dialog...

Lovely story :)

"wipes eyes" Your a lucky man.

I did get my gf to actually look at me a couple times (listening) when talking about the conspiracys though. I thought that was a big step forward from saying  "I don't want to here about any game!" haha

Very neat story. It makes me remember my first time playing an MMO.

I stopped reading at ...not getting rewarded enough.

Originally posted by marz.at.play

That's a great write up. It's refreshing to get your wife's opinion on TSW. I think you should hire her to give reviews on all new MMO's coming out. I completely agree with all her points; they are very valid. The biggest beef I had was that I never spoke or had the ability to make a choice during a conversation while playing. I don't get why we don't speak in the dialog...

I agree it is a nice write up. 

Having just fled SWTOR I was happy to see that my character did not speak in the cutscenes.  In swtor it was nice to hear my character speak,  but a lot of times when i would pick a dialog choice and my character would speak - I would think to myself- thats not what I wanted to say! Makes the cutscene shorter anyways to not have my toon speak.  I am not saying either way is bad   just different and not a gamebreaker at all - just a different way of doing things.

Yeah, having a voice in the cinematics does wonders. Just look at SWTOR. Nothing like being in a group and having a cinematic where you can't be sure who is talking because three different characters have the same voice or making a choice and hearing the same line for the hundredth time. That doesn't even really match with the choice you made.

No thanks. Choices definitely but they can shove the dialogue option. Wasn't sure I was ever keen on the concept and SWTOR pretty much showed me it is a fairly awful thing to do. 

Anyways, nice article...

nice story but last thing i want is my wife gettin into pc gaming mode and takin over..no ty..she can stick to washing the dishes(joking of course)

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Yeah, having a voice in the cinematics does wonders. Just look at SWTOR. Nothing like being in a group and having a cinematic where you can't be sure who is talking because three different characters have the same voice or making a choice and hearing the same line for the hundredth time. That doesn't even really match with the choice you made.

No thanks. Choices definitely but they can shove the dialogue option. Wasn't sure I was ever keen on the concept and SWTOR pretty much showed me it is a fairly awful thing to do. 

Anyways, nice article...

 

I do agree that everone having the same voice was a lil odd too.

Good stuff Bill!

My biggest problem with swtor character voices was that there were no choices. I wanted to make an old "don't mess with him" smuggler, but I couldn't because no matter how my toon looked he spoke like a sauve sarcastic young flyboy.

Thank your wife for us Bill. This was a great viewpoint that we don't get to often and it was refreshing.

Very cool, if only I could get my wife to use a computer enough to even begin the journey of playing a game. Tell her WASD and she would be like what where I don't see that on the screen LOL.

But I do give her props for actually enjoy watching me play on rare occations. She always interested in what the new flavor of game is today.

As always Bill, nice insight.

I created and mapped an xpadder profile to a 360 controller. She might prefer a gamepad/controller over the mouse and keyboard if its any easier. xpadder works pretty good with TSW.

My wife helps with char creation also, but that's about as far as she goes with these games. The only video game she has shown any interest in is Super Mario on the kids Wii...

Now pinterest.com, holy cow she is a crack head when it comes to that....LOL

My wife is intrigued by the secret world as well, but definately is not a mmo-virgin. she's been playing MMOs with me since may 8th 1999.

Yeah, character having a voice sounds like a great idea in theory, until you actually experience it. TOR gave my character voice and every time i spoke my thought was one of the following:

"that doesn't sound like my character"

"that's not what my character would say"

"why does my character sound like a retard?"

"that's not what i meant"

"why do i keep repeating the same things?"

"why does my character sound exactly the same as everyone else?"

Having played both TOR and TSW, i'll happily take TSW's strong, silent type.  I do think there is an evolution to be had in voicing your character in MMOs, but i think that evolution is you (the person behidn the keyboard) voice interacting with the NPCs, not a bunch of pre-recorded snippets of dialogue.  (For example, TSW's NPC interface says something like "yourself" and you click on that button to ask the person about themselves, it would be very cool if instead i could look at the option of "yourself" and say into my mic "tell me about yourself" and the NPC would answer.)

nice article. She needs a blog so I can find out what happens to Widget next!

P.S. I can relate to hating bad hairstyles in games.

Originally posted by Emwyn

nice article. She needs a blog so I can find out what happens to Widget next!

Would be a good read.