Secret World Legends: Rocky Start
I actually got into the final round of closed beta for Secret World Legends, like three days before they opened it up to all veteran players. I feel special. :p
I didn’t play the beta much at all because I’ve done most of this before, honestly, and I knew I would be moving over my account and making a real character soon enough. I was right about this, but SWL couldn’t have come at a worse time for me. I’m completely immersed in FFXIV: Stormblood right now, and my experiences with SWL have been rocky, to describe it kindly.
While The Secret World was not my main MMO, I was there on launch day and did buy into a lifetime package shortly after the game came out. This has served me well, giving me more credits than I could ever use, mostly which I used to purchase new issues as they came out. I’ve never played any of those issues, yet. Turns out that seemed like a good idea at the time, but with the shift to SWL, all that’ll be free anyhow. Ah well.
I never got very far into TSW — just to Transylvania. It was always one of those MMOs I championed for story, but had to be in the right mood to play. I usually got the itch to go back to Kingsmouth around Halloween time. But I will proudly say that though I knew nothing about making a proper build in that game, I did complete Blue Mountain back before they nerfed it!
Patcher Problems
So, when I read about the account transfer, I knew I had a whole bunch of credits in The Secret World I hadn’t spent yet. If I was going to get a one-time item transfer to SWL, I decided I was going to log into TSW first, and go on a shopping spree.
The only problem was, when I launched The Secret World, the launcher suddenly updated itself and turned that install into Secret World Legends without any warning! I had no idea what was going on, or how to fix it, and the new game had already started patching over the old.
I was miffed. This was not the way to handle a situation that was already somewhat delicate. There are many long-time TSW players who are not happy about the whole SWL thing to begin with. And now, for whatever reason, Funcom just rubbed some salt into that wound, auto-forcing their beloved old game to change into the new one that they may or may not want.
I already had a separate install of TSW on my computer, and by the time I realized what happened, the download was too far along to stop it. So I had to completely uninstall and reinstall The Secret World. This took the whole night, so no transfer for me.
Yet More Issues
Once I finally did get in to TSW and bought all the pets and cosmetics I could, I proceeded with the account transfer. This seems to have gone correctly… at least, according to the website. Except, once I re-created my character, keeping her as close to the original as possible, I didn’t see any of my stuff from the old game.
I logged in looking for only that — confirmation that my stuff had transferred. Days later, I still have no idea if any of it did or not.
I read that you are supposed to get something in your inventory that unlocks all the stuff. I didn’t see anything like that. I decided maybe I wouldn’t get it until after the tutorial was over with.
So…
Problem #1: I can’t confirm if my stuff transferred from TSW yet.
Problem #2: These tutorials are going on forever.
I get that they want to walk new players through all the possible side-quest types. But man… I get thrown into a cutscene, then into a graveyard, then into some fragmented raid-something-something that I was familiar with, but would have been extremely confused by if I were a totally new player. Then more cutscenes. Then London. And now that Tokyo scenario that TSW used to start with. I’m still not out of cutscenes.
I’ve logged off twice during this whole endless tutorial thing, and shoved it all aside for a few days. I feel it’s more confusing to a new player than anything else.
And I still can’t find my stuff!
Problem #3: This game performs very poorly on my computer.
It’s like I’m watching cutscenes and moving around in the world underwater. It’s not exactly lag… it’s just that everything… I don’t even know how to explain it. Moves soooo slowly… and I know that’s not how it’s supposed to look. I never had this issue with TSW, and it’s not exactly the most optimized game, either.
I lowered all my graphics settings to nothing, which I never have to do on any game I play. That hardly helped.
I wondered if it was because I was trying to play in windowed mode. I much prefer windowed mode for gaming because I tend to have other things going on that may require me to hop out of a game or respond in another window.
I hate being forced into full screen, but I switched to see if that was the issue. That didn’t help either! In fact, I started having issues where I couldn’t interact with the UI because for some odd reason, the game thought my mouse was somewhere it wasn’t… or something weird like that.
That’s where I closed the game a second time. It’s pretty much unplayable for me.
And I still don’t know if my stuff transferred! So frustrating!
Can anyone confirm at what point they actually got their transferred stuff and the method they received it? That’s really, at this point, all I care about.
PS: I don’t like the new battle system, either. The original battle system wasn’t great, but I’m not a fan of the “action” RPG type game that locks your mouse down unless you press the Alt key.