The Secret World beta impressions

[Sebiale]

So, impressions after about 30 minutes of play:
The character customization doesn't seem to be implemented yet, and the initial clothing options are limited, but that's fine because there seems to be a good variety of clothing available shortly after start, although it seems to require a good bit of in-game cash.

The opening animations seemed rather jerky, but that might be a fault on my end--I'm running a 2009 multimedia laptop, not even a gaming laptop. At the lowest settings I can keep it going smooth for the most part, although it's not really a smooth experience. Even on the lowest settings though it looks pretty good. I should be back on my desktop by next week though, and that thing is a powerhouse, so it should be able to handle the game much better.

The games does have some long load times, at least initially. Like GW the load times seem to become better after the first time.

The aesthetic and environments seems to be very well done and detailed. The character models, at least for NPCs, look quite realistic and varied.

Some subtitles are missing, even in the beginning scenes, which is a bit annoying, but hopefully those will be fixed eventually.

Now for the two big points: questing and combat.
So far I've only had to actually accept a single quest, and after that it's just been updating itself as I move through the game. Not completely immersive, but better than having to stop and talk to someone for every stage.

Combat is a definite improvement over the traditional form. Not having played TERA or GW2, I'm not sure how it compares.
Some abilities are true-action, you can use them at your own discretion regardless of targets or targeting, such as the shotgun's basic attack. Other abilities still require targeting, but so far I haven't had to do much in the way of targeting, the system takes care of a lot on its own.
Some attacks can be dodged, but as far as I can tell, the game lacks any sort of dodge feature, which leaves strafing as the main form of dodge. That on its own isn't too bad, but it means you need to have some quick fingers to dance between moving and attacking, which is skill-based in a sense I guess.
So from what I've heard of GW and TERA, TSW isn't as advanced in terms of true combat, but it's definitely better than the old model of sitting in place, which in TSW will get you killed.
The AI is actually fairly intelligent, even low-level mobs know enough to surround their enemy (you), which requires the player to keep moving to keep them in front of in the combat tutorial so that you can keeps the hordes of enemies in your shotgun's area of damage. There was a point in the tutorial where a group of enemies had spread out across a room, which made the shotgun rather inefficient. Just having to kill them one a time nearly resulted in my own death because they were all flinging bolts of filth at me--painful things. Was down to 30 of my 1500 HP before the last went down.