Secret World Legends

Lookie here, a name change. The Secret World is becoming Secret World Legends.

But wait, don’t we already have a Secret World thread? Yeah, but here’s the thing: apparently there will actually be two separate games. From the producer’s letter:

[quote]First and foremost, given the sweeping extent of the changes being implemented, Secret World Legends will reset story progression for anyone who joins, offering a fresh start for all players.
This will not erase your progression in The Secret World though! Secret World Legends will exist on a different server than The Secret World, meaning you will still be able to play your old character on The Secret World server. But we hope you consider starting anew in Secret World Legends to experience all the new content and updates coming to the game. We’ve made some major improvements to the game and server, so Secret World Legends will have its own client. You can have both Secret World Legends and The Secret World installed on the same computer and play either game at any time.[/quote]

My first reaction is that this is a terrible idea. Splitting your player base in an MMO is pretty much always bad, and the extra effort required to maintain two separate versions of the game is going to cut into their development resources. But hey, maybe they’ll pull it off!

Anyway, lots of details yet to come. They’re starting a beta soonish, which you can sign up for if you’re interested.

Colour me interested.

Keen on seeing what changes are being made to the combat.

I think the combat is already one of the best combat systems in the MMO space (which is not saying so much really) so that does not give me a good feeling. And yeah, splitting player base is not a great idea. Nor do I particularly want to start over. But we’ll see what it actually looks like.

“Shared-world RPG” instead of an MMO.

Okay, then.

The mini trailer is followed by the two words I hate most in video games: “Coming Soon”, which as we know can mean next week, or sometime before the fall of western civilization…

I still need to actually try Secret World.

I agree about the issue of splitting your player base, but then I think of SW Galaxies and how much I would have loved to return to the ‘original’ vision periodically. Or even WoW offering vanilla-ish versions. Even if development progress is halted on these legacy servers, the ability for players to return to them is a huge win from a historical perspective. Hopefully the maintenance cost is low enough that this lasts longer than six months.

The writing, voice acting, and quests are well worth the price of admission.

This is what I hear, and I actually do own it, I just keep forgetting to actually try it.

I guess you may as well wait for the revamp now.

This is pretty much the boat I’m in. I played a trial and liked the quests and environments, but didn’t like the combat at all. Maybe the revamped combat will sit better with me. I bought the first 13 chapters or so and they’ve been gathering virtual dust.

I’m actually cautiously optimistic here. For years, when someone asks whether they should play The Secret World on this forum, we inevitably tell them: “Yeah, it’s worth it even if you just play it as a solo RPG…”

So yeah. Why not embrace that? This could be really successful for them, and if nothing else it’s an interesting experiment for evolving a game.

I do think it means that episodic content for the MMO is probably done or being phased out, but maybe that ends up in the RPG version.

They’re not making it a solo RPG, though. If they were I would be way more excited.

Sure sounds like it’s a solo RPG with some marketing speak to differentiate it. Certainly more of a solo RPG than the MMO was…and people play the MMO like a solo game already.

MMORPG: Why the shy away from the MMO term to “Shared World RPG”? Is the game still an MMO where you play with thousands of others at once, or is it more “solo” and closed off a la Destiny?

RA: We think one of the strengths of The Secret World was its story and settings.

As a Shared World RPG, we have reduced the maximum amount of players that can enter a playfield. While adventuring, you will still meet a few strangers here and there, but the focus is on you, and your friends if you choose. You are following your character’s story, your experience won’t be affected by hundreds of other players nearby trying to kill the same monster.

It sounds like the same game running on the same servers with a lower max players per instance. You can (and most people do, especially in TSW) solo in an MMO, but it still has the design and technical structure of an MMO, not a single player game.

Roman Amiel specifically listed the things that they’re changing to get away from the MMO infrastructure of the game. You may not believe those things, but for now he’s specifically made a point that they’re steering away from some of TSW’s MMO tropes.

They’ve been saying “this spring”, so hopefully that means within a few months…though the fall of western civilization isn’t mutually exclusive here.

[quote=“triggercut, post:12, topic:129091, full:true”]
I’m actually cautiously optimistic here. For years, when someone asks whether they should play The Secret World on this forum, we inevitably tell them: “Yeah, it’s worth it even if you just play it as a solo RPG…”[/quote]

in fact, some of the mahmorpigahness of the game worked against it. E.g. The mob density, necessary to sustain many active players in an area, clogged up the exploration and subtracted from the game’s considerable atmosphere.

I never played it as much as everyone else here but I have positive memories of The Secret World and think they had some good ideas both with respect to mechanics and integrating story into the gameplay.

All I am saying is that steering away from the more multiplayer aspects of the design is not the same thing as actually making it a single player RPG.

I will only try this if Funcom fix their pants-on-head retarded account/payment systems.