Some choice quotes from the interview:
- On the demotion from MMORPG: “Early in development for The Secret World, we came out with ideas like, is it really even an MMO? It is massively multiplayer in a sense, but we didn’t focus on things that traditional MMOs focused on.”
- On why TSW wasn’t profitable: “Making more money by making more content stopped being viable at the beginning of last year… the actual issues were not making a profit any more.”
- On whether or not SWL might have lockboxes: “Yes.”
- On the greater good: “At the end of the day, some group of our current customers were going to be upset.”
- On porting progress over from TSW: “We could have made it work given enough resources and time. However, we didn’t have it […] Pretty much anything is possible. It just wasn’t plausible.”
- On Season Two’s arrival: “Later this year. We’re going to be publishing our post-launch roadmap.”
- On AEGIS: “The AGEIS system will not be the same in Secret World Legends. AEGIS was probably a mistake.”
Still waiting for a compelling reason to play this.
From what i’m hearing the so called changes are just not that different from what it was. Meaning the combat hasn’t really changed all that much.
Combat is more akin to Neverwinter now. The Ability Wheel is gone, you have a simplier, somewhat linear, tree to put points into. You don’t do the “use builder to get X resources to then use bigger spender ability”.
It’s more accessable now for the masses. The whole ability wheel, no levels and no classes of TSW probably confused a lot of people who were used to Blizzard’s hand-holding style of gameplay.
Um…is it mentioned anywhere if we get to keep our toon’s names, or even reserve them for a time?
There’s a button at the bottom middle of your account page to reserve name. You have to login and rename your character through if you haven’t since their recent name wipe.
Brilliant, thank you!
Cool, good to know I can keep my cosmetic goodies. :D
I don’t care about lockboxes. I don’t care about starting over. I don’t even care much about losing my lifetime sub, if I get all the content for free.
What I do care about is all the stuff I bought, earned, or won for character customization. I literally bought real-world clothes to match things I had in game so I could, if I chose, match my character. Am I just losing all that stuff? Some of it likely can’t ever be gotten again; it was from giveaways and contests. The rest was purchased with the $300 I spent on that lifetime sub.
I’m not buying that stuff again, and I don’t think I want to play without it.
They’ve said in other interviews that most or all of your cosmetic goodies will transfer over, as will your lifetime sub.
That is fantastic news, thanks.
The bottom line is TSW needs a lot more content. People can talk all they want about combat mechanics, the ability wheel, the new user experience, etc., but I think content is going to be the biggest factor in how well the game does from here on. We need more stories, more dungeons, more maps, bigger hub cities with more to do in them, etc.
Granted, if you’ve been playing a while, it may seem like there’s not a lot of content. But I spent WEEKS in Kingsmouth before I felt like I should move on to the next zone. Secret World has a ton of content. The problem isn’t the front loaded content, but the back loaded stuff beyond Transylvania. Which they’ve said this will allow them to develop and release, and hopefully the new blood that a Free to Play launch brings will allow them to bring that plan to fruition.
TSW had a lot of content for a newish game. The story was very dense. The problem is that it is 5 years old and hasn’t had any real content updates for the last 2 years. Much of the content near end game was thinly veiled grinding. Scenarios and Aegis were the worst offenders, but even the Nightmare dungeons and raids were just high difficulty, low return missions to make gearing up to QL11 a long, slow, grueling effort.
The worst part is that there was so much more hinted at after that point. Everyone wanted to be ready for what came next. But then nothing came, and people left. Then more nothing came, and more people left. Then it became impossible to make new content because they lost too many people by not making new content.
AEGIS was probably a mistake.
LOL. That only took them three years. Better late than never, I guess. Probably too late though to make a difference for this game, relaunch or not. It was the reason I quit playing the game. One of them anyway, along with all the similar grindtastic garbage they rolled out in that era. If the reboot is going to return to the simplicity and clarity of the original game, and even streamline and improve it more, without all the crap they tacked on later, I might take another look.
I may be the odd one out here, but I am looking forward to SWL or whatever it’s called. I bought and played (and sub’d) on release and I always felt the MMO side of things was really lacking. It wasn’t ever really an MMO. I quit just a couple of months after release, but I think I will jump in and do all the puzzles from the start this time. At least I won’t have to get groups for the difficult parts now they have been reworked.
Does everyone have to be so negative about it? I think we should give it a chance – Funcom are a decent company.
Think it would’ve been better if they went down the single player sandbox route with optional multiplayer. Similar to Borderlands, Diablo, Mass Effect, etc.
Probably would’ve saved them so much money and time. Not to mention much better production values in terms of gameplay.
Wait just a second.
“Making more money by making more content stopped being viable at the beginning of last year… the actual issues were not making a profit any more.”
What – precisely – is going to make ‘offering the exact same content’ a 2nd time change that equation, that THIS TIME the model will NOW support new content offerings?
Do you really think that adding some SFX, some breadcrumb quests, a reticle, and dumbing down the advancement system will substantially change that?
That’s a pretty expensive gamble on long odds, considering you’re telling your longest-time, most faithful, durable customer base: “oh, sorry, you have to do it ALL again! ”
For my $0.02? I don’t.
My optimism is slowly ticking toward “this was a dumb idea”. I didn’t want to seriously consider that this was a moneygrab. I LIKE FUNCOM. I liked AoC (and am saddened it’s basically in a coma). Yet…I don’t think these guys are dumb…which means that it’s only more likely that this is a hail-mary moneygrab? Damn I hate saying that.
Look, they don’t (exactly) want you. They want the people that bring profitability. You can be faithful and durable all you want, but you can still not be enough material for the construction to not fall down.
It means they are going to focus on other types of monetisation and just give everyone all the content for free. ie: lockboxes etc
Was their any discussion regarding PVP in SWL, I know they plan to start with Shamebala (which is a shame). But I’d like to hear more about there future plans for PVP in SWL. PVP is player made competition aslong as there’s a base to allow it to grow on. It’s the only thing that kept me logging on for my 4 years in TSW because I burnt out on most PVE content. Despite very little updates being made to PVP over those years having a base of Stonehenge/ElDorado and Fusang was enough to make me and many others a regular for a long time to come regardless of the rate content was released. I think it will be a mistake for them to ignore this aspect of the game.
Shamebala is a storyline area. I wonder if they’re considering saving the rest for when the story calls for the area more. I do know there’s the theories about one of the intended upcoming areas being in South America (so, El Dorado).