The Stream Team: Exploring the South African night in Secret World Legends

What: Secret World Legends
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 8:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 19th, 2018 Read more
See: The Secret World
What: Secret World Legends
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 8:00 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 19th, 2018 Read more
If you were hoping for bigger hints than “more missions to flesh out New Dawn,” you may be somewhat disappointed with those hints, but they are hints.
Meredith is also looking for feedback from players about what can be added to the game that isn’t there currently; players are asked to leave suggestions about what one thing could be added to the title for the future separately from the usual feedback threads. It’s a chance to have your voice heard about the longer-term development of the game, so if you’ve got ideas and want them to be known, now is your moment.
As someone who only has one functioning eye, I find that my vision is paramount to my quality of life and personal enjoyment. Plus, it would make playing MMORPGs slightly more difficult if everything was dark.
But I’m not everyone, and I have to allow for the possibility that there are gamers out there who are desperate to lose their sight but at a loss as to how to do it. With that in mind, I present SmugglerSteel’s one-step process to going blind in 10 seconds or less: Find the largest sun you can in Star Wars: The Old Republic and stare at it from about 20 feet away.
At least the last thing you’ll see will literally brighten your day!
What: Secret World Legends
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 9:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 13th, 2018
“My top priorities over the last few months [were] always to ensure the proper release and quality of Dawn of the Morninglight,” he tells players, referring to the SWL story update that just launched. “It seems that you’ve all been enjoying the new content (even if it felt a bit short… I know!). […] I’m proud to say that we’ve pushed the boundaries of what the MMO genre has done in terms of story-telling and immersion (rainbow unicorn masks aside maybe?).”
No need to panic, however: Chris “Nirvelle” Meredith will be taking over the helm of Secret World, Tilty says. Coincidentally, MOP’s MJ Guthrie will be streaming the game tonight on OPTV at 9 p.m. EDT, so you can join her in freaking out then and there.
On this week’s show, MJ and Justin get giddy over Secret World Legends’ season two, discuss what World of Warcraft’s launch date means for players, and cover a whole host of major updates that have arrived for the MMO community.
It’s the Massively OP Podcast, an action-packed hour of news, tales, opinions, and gamer emails! And remember, if you’d like to send in your own letter to the show, use the “Tips” button in the top-right corner of the site to do so.
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I’ve always been curious about you folks who forgave Funcom for 2017. I’m not sure that, were I a hardcore old-school Secret World player, I could so easily let slide that whole “yeah so we’re gonna reboot the game and you can’t bring the toons you spent the last five years building” thing. But given the reboot’s apparent success last year and the ongoing attention on the game by the MMORPG community, a lot of you did forgive the studio and jumped right back in, including our own Secret World vets here on staff. Wherever their breaking point is, that wasn’t it.
Massively OP reader Pepperzine is wondering about that breaking point too and where the game stands in the community since the relaunch nine months ago and the new content that’s finally launched. “Now that around nine months have passed since The Secret World Legends has launched, I think it would be interesting to do a follow-up poll on if the community here at MOP is playing it, quit playing it, or returning for the Africa content!”
Great idea! Let’s do it.
I’m a huge fan of Guild Wars 2’s Super Adventure Box, even if I am not the best jumper in the world. My kid loves it, I love the graphics, the rewards are fun – really, it’s something we look forward to every year since it became a permanent event fixture. On the other hand, when the update doesn’t change much from year to year aside from QOL fixes, some of the shine does wear off. I definitely felt that way in World of Warcraft in the years when Blizzard just put the annual events on repeat (it’s gotten better about giving those events refreshes in recent years, I’ve noticed!).
Still, I hate to look a gift sparklepony in the mouth. It could be worse: I could be one of those Secret World players who are practically begging for the return of some of the events they miss from the old game in the new game because they’ve been cut off while Funcom slowly rolls them back out.
Do you get grumpy over MMO events on repeat? Would you prefer them to see a refresh every year, or are you just glad to see any annual events at all in your MMO of choice?
Even though I have experienced 99% of the mission content before (thanks to completing the story through Tokyo in TSW), I seriously wish I could take back my sprinting to the Season 2 content. I don’t regret having the opportunity to show South Africa off to everyone on OPTV, but I do regret cheating myself of the chance to really savor the journey. I felt rushed, less patient with figuring out puzzles (my favorite part of the game!), and I had no time to appreciate the small changes in story that made it seem new again.
I am not about to make that mistake in South Africa! And I hope you won’t either. Barrelling through the main story will only rob you in the end.
What: Secret World Legends
Who: MJ Guthrie
When: 5:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 4th, 2018
It was an obnoxious, brute-force decision that greatly alienated many TSW players, and in my opinion, did not pay off as well as Funcom had hoped. Without allowing us to port over our characters or perhaps figure out a way to transform the old MMO into a free-to-play model (like so, so many other MMORPGs had), the studio forced us into a Sophie’s Choice. Did we say goodbye to the game we knew and loved (or worse, remain in a stagnant game forever), or did we start over and put up with the changes?
Grudgingly and not gladly, I started over. I spent a half-year leveling up a brand-new character just to get to the same place that I was before all of this started. And now that we are on the verge of the start of season two, I have time to reflect on why, exactly, I put up with the reboot and didn’t bid this game universe farewell. Here are my reasons.
“You’ve laid low in the limelight for long enough; now it’s time to spring into action,” tease Funcom’s patch notes. “Time to Infiltrate the Morninglight stronghold in South Africa. Time to find answers – to find Marquard. After this long, it’s gonna take a lot to take him away from you. Dawn of the Morninglight is the free continuation of Secret World Legends’ story, set after the events of Kaidan and your ascent through Orochi Tower. If you’re done with the Tokyo storyline, you’ll receive an SMS from a mysterious sender, kicking things off. Welcome to New Dawn. Just mind the curfew, yeah?”
Check out our detailed preview of the update, and then stay tuned for plenty more Secret World coverage today, including our stream of the new content at 4 5 p.m. EDT this afternoon. MJ stayed up until dawn to make this stream happen, so you’d better appreciate it!
When you step back to think about it, it is amazing that we are living in a day and age in which we can enjoy such vivid, bleeding-edge graphics that are readily available on any 16-bit console! With sprites, parallax scrolling, blast processing, SFX chips, and the almighty Mode 7, we are transported beyond the television screen and into these game worlds like we were there!
We start our tour of this week’s player screenshots — taken on Polaroids — with Hikari Kenzaki’s picture of the last performance of HTR in The Secret World before the game rebooted as Secret World Legends. Look at those vibrant colors! We can now game with all the colors of the wind!