I’m sorry my reply got to essay length. It wasn’t supposed to. I get carried away.

Anyway, I want to add to it. You were having problems with Win7/32. I was first using XP/32, and there *is* a memory leak (whatever Funcom chooses to call it ) which causes a crash after a few zones, usually on zoning but not always. If there’s any way you can upgrade to Win7/64 it should go away.

If you don’t have the option of upgrading, there are a couple of suggestions from threads on the forum. I never tried these, because that machine was overdue for an upgrade anyway, but they look promising.

http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=52063 – see post #4. That’s a pretty safe change, but whether it will really help I don’t know.
http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=52180 – this looks like it has possibilities.

The two together should give you much more time between crashes, but if it truly *is* a memory leak (and it looks like it to me), eventually it will crash. Relogging before running an instance might not be a bad idea.

The build stuff is intriguing. In a way I regret that I went with my pistols/blades combination but I really didn’t know any better at the time. I will have to spend some time looking over the suggested synergies in the paladin deck to figure out how to play. It’s all very confusing, but also exciting! When did I last have a game where it was truly exciting how to set up skills? This definitely beats GW2′s traits and skills system, IMHO.

I should look into tanking. Dang, haven’t been this excited about a game in ages!

The loudest complaints about TSW (other than those about quest bugs or chat bugs, which I sympathize with) is that the game doesn’t hand spoonfeed you. There are certainly places where it doesn’t do enough, such as crafting and decks. But once you understand what decks are, you realize as Aela pointed out that decks are not the game’s ultimate goal. Each deck is only one set of options, not necessarily the best even for what it addresses, just viable. You can make a viable build purely out of inner circle abilities, and you don’t instantly become uber on getting a deck. So some complain that decks take far too much AP, but that misses the point that a deck is really an achievement, and that you don’t need it to go as far as you like in the game. Others complain that XXX deck is available to Dragon, but not to Templar – but you can put together precisely the same set of abilities as a Templar than a Dragon. All that’s missing is the uniform – so fill in another deck for looks, if you want.

The one thing decks do give you is a concept of synergy. I know that I *can* put together a viable build using swords and elementalism, because that’s what the Ninja deck uses. But then I find that many of the synergetic abilities aren’t available until later, so I look for different ones, and find different synergies. And honestly, I’m not sure that there are really combinations of weapons that can’t be made to work.

You’ll find there are a number of checks in game. The first comes up at the start of The Savage Coast. Up to that point you’ve been figuring out how combat works, abilities and gear and such. If you haven’t tried to race through content and bypass missions, you’ll arrive at The Savage Coast with the gear you need to survive, but you’re going to discover very quickly that you need to *think* about the combination of abilities you’re using, and actually have a strategy for surviving harder singles and occasional adds.

In fact that was what made me a True Believer in TSW. After following the game with interest for a year or so (after I burned out on Rift) and even doing the first couple of open beta weekends, I was certain that I would be interested in the game, but not so sure that the limited combat system wouldn’t become boring. Only seven abilities, and most of the time hitting only a couple of them… and it didn’t help that the instance videos I’d watched usually showed an elementalist apparently casting the same spell over and over. But then I ran into the demons below the Overlook Motel, and realized that the random collection of abilities I’d put together weren’t cutting it. I died several times before realizing that I needed to put some effort, and several times more before I began to understand that I needed a) to think about balancing single-target and multiple-target attacks, b) to have multiple consumers available, so that I was completely utilizing both weapon types, and c) that my passives needed some synergy to support those.

At that point, two things happened: the meta-game of creating a viable build became interesting, and combat itself required me to think about the order of pushing buttons. And at that point I realized that combat wasn’t simple, it was elegant, and I wasn’t going to get a free pass on mob killing.

In group play one of the biggest problems I’ve seen is the dreaded tank shortage. As games become more complex, there’s more pressure on tanks. TSW fights require constant vigilance. For someone like me who can do okay as a DPS and maybe even reasonably as a healer, TSW tanking would be impossible. You understand tanking, and you have the situational awareness that I lack. I think you’d almost certainly love it.

I did the raven quest grouped yesterday. I don’t know why it didn’t work for your friends.