The Secret World: My Beta Weekend #4 Experience (Part One)

Have you tried out the latest "The Secret World" Beta Weekend #4? If yes, then how was it? Was it fun and would you buy the game and play it? If no, then don't fret it. I'll share with you my experience of the beta weekend - what I liked about it, what I don't as well as what I've learnt about the game's systems.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend that you spend 250 Euros on this game right off the bat to buy its "Grandmaster" package (Lifetime membership). But this doesn't mean that you should disregard the game totally either. I would rather suggest that you buy the game and try it out for the first 30 days. If your interested, then buy the lifetime membership afterwards. If your still undecided, subscribe for a month or two to see if that will change your mind. In my opinion, you should never spend so much on a game that you did not even try out yet (just because it would "save" money later on). Who knows, you might not even like it afterwards, or it might be a far cry from your expectations...on the later stages perhaps? Anyway, let's get back to the beta experience.

First off, I didn't quite like what I encountered during my downloading of the beta client. I got the email invite like on Tuesday morning last week. When I downloaded the 10 MB client and started with the installation process, I was sure that the client said that it would require at least 15,375.4 MB of hdd space to install.

Normally, if a game client said that, you would at least expect that the client size to be around that much in size only...give or take a couple of GB at worst. But what's shocking to me was that at the end of the day, the whole folder where I stored the game grew in size to a shocking 27.8 GB (That's roughly 2X the hdd space requirement stated by the installer). I did a check on the minimum system requirements afterwards and saw that it required at least 30 GB of hdd space. So I guess they might have missed this tiny detail? But surely this would have placed the company in a bad spotlight right?

On a similar note, if the client size is 30 GB, shouldn't more time have been given to the population at large to download the client? Since not many people all around the world would have a fast enough connection to download 30 GB of data in just under 4 - 5 days. Unless of course you leave the computer on at night while you sleep. Well I have to admit my internet service provider (ISP) isn't top-notched and I can't afford any better, but surely there should be others in a situation quite like mine right? How many of you can download 1 GB of data in minutes? I have to say my connection crawled like a turtle and could only manage to download 1 GB of data in 2.5 to 3 hours. So downloading the client took quite a lot of time and effort on my part....not to mention that I was only expecting to download 15 GB of data, not 27.8 GB. (And also that time is running against me.)

After a humongous struggle, I managed to finish the client with 19 hours left till the end of beta weekend #4. So in the end, I only managed to test and run around in the game world for like 9 hours (had to sleep too you know ^_^). Hahaha...70 hours of effort downloading only to last for 9 hours. Highly inefficient don't you think? But frankly speaking, I do not regret having to spend my time downloading it. It was quite an eye-opener.

Give me some time as I prepare and sort through the screenshots and vids that I took whilst in the game world. In the next few posts, I will be sharing with you more information regarding the character creation, skills, equipments and quest system of "The Secret World".

- BuLaDiFu -

Next: The Secret World (Part Two)

Posted in: The Secret World