You can buy the game for some small cash and it will give you unlimited access to all original content and first 5 or 6 issues. It's few hundred hours of quality solo content, persistent PvP and DM/CTF/domination minigames, 8 5-man dungeons, 2 10-man raids and lairs (open world locations with elite mobs). On top of that you can buy mission packs.
Game features challenging, adventure-style quests, fully voiced, with original assets (when you pick up torn note or a cell phone, you actually see it on screen - hell, one mission even requires calling to London and listening to recorded message). Quest markers are minimal - shown only if you're explicitly said where to go, otherwise there aren't any and you have to figure it out, follow coded directions, blood trail etc. Items highlight only if you're close to them - there are no quests where you're said to find evidence and immediately get a quest marker that shows you they're in Winking Skeever Inn under a bed on second floor (hello ESO). Kill/gather x quests are very rare, 99% of the quests contain some lore or clue about the Big Mystary.
The setting that is a clever mix of regional folklore, Gaiman, King and above all - Lovecraft. It's presented in modern day setting, where NPCs are amused/horrified/thrilled by what's going on, but not surprised - after all they watched horror movies, unlike most horror movie characters... Instead of dungeons you will visit banks, libraries, asylums, offices. Group content will have you investigating post-soviet research centers or helping Excalibur-wielding viking fend off Mayan invasion. The horrory quest are actually very "nope" (for me even after several walkthroughs). I don't like fairy shit, but here it's served so intelligently and with a very dark tone.
Combat is kinda step back from AoC, rather usual MMO fare. But most of the enemies are overpowered and you have to respect them. They have all kinds of different mechanics and it's usually just better to avoid them.
If that's not clear yet - this is probably the best game I ever played. Because of feels it gives, the mindfuck, the boner-inducing, unnamed horror.
Fucking signets. They're completely optional - they may have big impact your characters performance, but you're fine without them. The problem with them is that they're random drops, there's like 40 types of them divided in 3 quality levels. You need 10 of the same type to upgrade to next level, so calculate the odds by yourself. Half of them are pretty shit, but the best ones are super expensive. I mean ridiculously expensive - several hundred millions (billions even) of pax. You get 10-30k per mission (I usually carry 3-4mil), so again calculate yourself.
TSW's story is like a good HPL novel, which you can read again and again, each time getting something more out of it, because the lore is very obscure and leaves a lot of blanks that you have to use your own imagination to fill in.
The lore is so obscure, that even when it FUCKING PUNCHES people in the face, they still don't know what the fuck is happening. Unless you actually use your brain and connect the dots.
In one of the last missions you stand inside of a Gaia Engine and explicitly see how it works - which should fire an alarm in any head. Still, most players are clueless
Figurining that shit out (reading every bit of lore, listening to every NPC sentence, boss taunts, doing every hidden side quest) was the best gaming experience I've ever had in my 24 year career.
I dunno, man. You say it's not competitive, the price tags on these signets disagree. These same arguments apply to STO. PvP there is a ghost town, too. Why's PvP a ghost town? PvE-based mechanics that translate poorly to PvP?
The price tag is so high because there was nothing else to put money for a long time and players who played everyday since launch have ridiculous amounts of money. Right now you need tons of mats for augments (also optional), so selling sigs for that ridiculous amount of money makes sense. I don't give a fuck about that and still have no issues in any content, but if it was me from the AoC era - I would invest hundreds of hours just for a 2% dps gain.
