Today we announced that we are releasing the game on June 26th, 2017!
We wanted to take this opportunity to provide an overview of what Secret World Legends is. Ever since we announced the game we’ve seen a lot of questions and discussions about what this means to The Secret World and what people can expect in Secret World Legends.
Today we’ve released a video that we hope better answers the question of what the game is:
Secret World Legends is a free-to-play reboot of 2012’s The Secret World. We’ve learned a lot over the past several years, and wanted to go back and draw upon as much of that experience in our approach for Secret World Legends. It will mean going back and re-doing many mechanics and design decisions from TSW, and there’s a ton of under-the-hood work going into Secret World Legends that may not even be immediately apparent from the get-go.
One of the most common questions we’ve received is simply why are we doing this?
We’re doing this because we feel the game still has a ton to offer. There are stories yet to be told, adventures yet to be had, and locations yet to be explored. As a studio, we had to decide whether to put the game on the backburner and move the team onto a new project, or if we should reinvest in it and breathe new, fresh air into the game. We decided on the latter, because we truly believe there is untapped potential in the game, and because there is a vast audience out there that haven’t even discovered the game yet – and hey, we think they should!
One of the things we knew we had to do to bring a new wave of players into the game is switch to a free-to-play model, and for that to truly work we’ve obviously had to make some significant changes to how the game plays. We know it’s a risk, but we’ve chosen to take that risk instead of seeing the game fade away. We’re giving it our best shot, and our hope is Secret World Legends will provide you with many more years of entertainment to come.
This reboot will allow us to continue adding new content and new storylines that will benefit players both new and old. Yes, we’ll finally be able to launch Season 2!
Now, let’s talk about the game itself!
We want to be able to share the story and setting with everybody, so what is apparent immediately are the changes to accessibility. We want to get players into the action as quickly as possible, so we’re adding a new tutorial that gets players into the game and in control right from the start! The entire ability and progression system from TSW has been redesigned to make way more sense, make every choice stand out, and minimize instances where players could feel like they made the wrong choice when building a character.
New starter “classes” have also been added, to help guide players along as they learn more about their abilities, weapons, and possible combinations. This is important, since every single weapon type is getting their own unique combat mechanics! For example, Shotguns now have an ammunition count, and can choose from a variety of ammo types (self-heal, damage over time, etc.) when reloaded!
The revamped ability and weapon system is built with the aim to make Secret World Legends’ gameplay more responsive and action-oriented. To that end, we’re adopting traditional action game controls, meaning aiming everything with the mouse and moving with the keyboard! We’ll have a closer look at combat next week.
Also in store is a rework of the dressing room, which will allow for keeping track of the thousands of available clothing options much, much easier, a whole free-to-play economy system, a new equipment and upgrade system, updated character creation options, a slew of new visual effects for abilities and playfields, and a whole bunch of other stuff I’m probably forgetting about or can’t talk about yet. We’ll have more about all that in the coming weeks!
Secret World Legends is currently in Closed Beta, and we’re getting a ton of constructive feedback about everything that’s changed so far. We also need to stress this has been a BETA-beta, not a glorified demo or stress test that runs for a week before launch, so there’s many aspects of the Beta still not polished or even ready to be tested right now.
So, first, we’d like to extend a huge thank-you to all our Closed Beta participants for your help in making Secret World Legends as awesome as it can be, and then for our testers with an extensive TSW background, a special thank-you for all your input on what we can improve on.
Change can be a tough, and despite all the new things going into it, Secret World Legends is still Secret World at its core. The story itself is still the spiraling, sprawling craziness we all love, the setting is still intact, and the zany investigation missions that have you trying to solve Morse code are all returning–uncompromised and unforgiving as ever. You know, the good stuff.
That is Secret World Legends in a nutshell.
Over the next few weeks we will be revealing more details about Secret World Legends and how it all works, so keep your eyes peeled! Thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
Andy Benditt
Community Manager
Secret World Legends