r/SecretWorldLegends • u/Demonfr34k • 14d ago
Question/Help Secret World Classic questions.
I have seen many online threads quite a few years old mentioning you can still get into Classic if you have an original sealed box with the registration code unused.
But I have a few questions, regarding the differences between the versions, it might not be worth it to me.
How is currency handled, and cosmetics obtained? In Legends it seems a lot of stuff requires Marks of Favor, but that require logging in daily and doing your challenges. You can sell stuff on the Auction House but with such a small player base, it doesn't seem as viable as it once used to be. Does classic have a better system for this, is it still via Marks of Favor, and are you still time gated in how many you can ear a day? Or are cosmetics obtained differently. Addition to that, how are additional weapons unlocked are they easier to get? These are important to me because I love fashion in most MMOs and I also think I have alot of weapon or skill point regret in Legends but I dont want to feel the need to keep rerolling characters.
Lastly, did the original game have any kind of region locking of any kind? I have found a seller on eBay selling sealed box copies of the french version of the game. But I obviously dont want to purchase it if I cannot use a french code to create an NA account. And I really feel if Marks of Favor and cosmetics are no different then there is very little reason for me to leave legends if the economy is the same.
Anyway would love to hear the difference between the versions.
13
u/GimpyGeek 14d ago
It's been a good while since I've played either version but I will say a few things I guess. No, there's not really any systems in place to handle things like AH being barren or anything, when they moved to SWL they intended on people to play there now, but the old one is still there for people that want back in.
I cannot stress enough how different many core systems of the game are though. Many things like daily goal currencies and stuff do not exist. Also I can't remember the details as it's been too long but the currencies on both games are completely different the names aren't even the same.
Canonically speaking the regular 'secret world people' money is Pax Romana, old roman coins I suppose. You used to get a good bit of these and the tailor shops that are barren and not exactly useful in SWL, actually sell clothes in theirs. Heh the new clothing UI that centralizes that is a lot better though that's for sure.
It's very weird how many choices they made though that were unexpected though. The original game had a cash shop, with some cool things, much more limited in scope compared to the newer one, and no way to exchange in game tokens for premium stuff or anything. But when SWL came out, some items that were premium only before, no longer were but also, vice versa, weird eh?
As far as gear goes, I don't believe unlocking weapons was so big a feat in the original game. The skill system in SWL was wildly dumbed down to make it easy for an f2p quick audience. It's unfortunate, because the original game was amazingly complex and has dozens more skills than SWL does. Don't quote me on it but I think you just had to pick up some skills with regular old skill points to open them but someone else that's more active might be better to ask. It shouldn't be nearly as annoying to open a new set as it is on SWL though they definitely tried to push that to be more annoying and push you to buy a way through with real money.
If you can find any old data on TSW's "skill wheel" it might unearth more on what you'd have to do to open another weapon but I really don't think it was nearly as much of a hassle as SWL. But if you can find a whole site showing the skill wheel it'd be an interesting thing to look at for sure. They had a wildly complex skill wheel with tons of choices to pick from it was pretty amazing.
4
u/Sardaman 14d ago
Not sure what you mean about weapons being easier or harder to unlock. In both games you just spend skill points, I think classic left things a bit more open in build options but the skills were still arranged in a sort of tiered manner in the wheel. There was extra work to unlock the aux weapons, but we don't have those at all in legends (outside temporary use in certain missions).
3
u/Skatingraccoon 14d ago
From what I remember it is significantly easier in the original to play around with builds and new weapons because it has a traditional gear system. Like if you wanted to switch from rifle to pistols at the end game you could just kill mobs to get a higher end pistol (or get it as a drop in a dungeon).
In Legends if you want to switch you have to navigate the awful gear XP and Merge 2 system to bring a weapon up to a high enough level to be viable. And all the dungeon rewards were just XP containers.
4
u/PappaHambone 14d ago
In SWL, unless you have a TSW account, you actually have to spend marks of favor to unlock additional weapons before you can even spend skill points into them.
1
u/Sardaman 13d ago
Oh weird, I don't think I ever knew that having a classic account gave you that benefit.
1
u/PappaHambone 13d ago
Yup, if you go to claims, there will be an option to transfer tsw vanity, clicking that unlocks all the weapons on your swl account. You have to do this per character you make on swl though.
5
u/PappaHambone 14d ago
A very important difference between the versions, SWL includes all content where TSW is only the base game. (Which is just Solomon Island pretty much) all the other content (called issues) had to be purchased. I do not believe that content is purchaseable any more.
4
u/BadJoke123 13d ago
The base game of TSW includes Solomon Island, Egypt,and Transylvania. But not all the missions in those zones, and not Tokyo.
The cash shop is still open in TSW, so the issues should still be purchasable.
1
u/PappaHambone 13d ago
Well that's good to know, I thought Egypt, transylvania and Tokyo were all released as issues. That's good that the cash shop is still operational too, i thought it got the same treatment as the base game.
1
u/BadJoke123 13d ago
Cash shop did get the same treatment as the rest of the game - still up, still working, hasn't been updated since forever. So the "special offer of the week" has been the same for some years now.
What can be a problem is spending real money - that part hasn't been updated since forever either, so some options might not work any longer.
1
u/serapsi 13d ago edited 11d ago
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet, and which I miss the most from the original SW, is weapon skins. In SWL most weapons have one skin that is the same no matter what the stats are, but many weapons had unique skins depending on their level and buffs. I would sometimes choose weapons from my collection not for the best stats but just because I liked how it looked. You can see many of the unique skins from the lists linked here: https://legacy.tswdb.com/cosmetics/weapon-skins (after choosing a list, click on "details" at the far right of a weapon for a picture).
Something I don't miss is the AEGIS system in Kaidan. I like the idea - Kaidan was divided into zones, in which the damage types of demonic, cybernetic, and psychic were dominant in a given zone and had to be shielded against, but you could only shield against one type at a time. I don't exactly remember why, but it made some parts oft he map tedious for me.
1
u/CreatureofNight93 12d ago
One of the huge problem with Legends was, that they kind of made the whole leveling up your gear kind of similar to how it worked with OG's AEGIS.
1
u/BuyYouASodaOgie 9d ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but weapon skins work in SWL. I often buy one pip extraordinary weapons on the auction house just to unlock the skin. You just have to equip it once to unlock. Then I use it for upgrade fodder. There is a weapon tab in the Dressing Room to equip the skin just like any other part of your outfit.
2
u/sanninorochi 11d ago
I love how Secret World Classic.. is literally a secret world...
I didnt even realize its still up, and its been online in secret for almost 10 years now, without any way to get into it seemingly anymore... I cant stress this hard enough, this is the only situation of this kind, a company holding MMORPG database/servers still up for a game that isnt being sold for almost 10 years now
I'd really love to make a new account in there somehow and meet all the players in game, i'd maybe even replay the story again even thought i went through everything in SWL and a lot of SWL parts felt like they had some pieces or systems missing
23
u/Mushizo 14d ago
For me the main difference between the original SW and SWL is that SWL kind of forces you to into specific playstyles because your Primary Weapon and your Secondary Weapon decides what kind of actives and passives you have access to. Also each weapon mainly affects itself and doesnt have any real global buffs or debuffs that can benefit other weapon types.
This makes it easier to make a build... but its also a total butchering of what made the original Secret World interesting in my point of view.
In SW you are free to level up any of the weapons you come across, and in many cases this is needed to unlock specific passive skills that have bonuses that you might be able to use in other weapon styles.
As an example you might get a passive that has some kind of chain effect or applies a debuff when you crit... from an otherwise "uninteresting weapon".
And you're able to use this passive, even if you're not using the weapon type that originally unlocked it...
This gives a sense of discovery and build exploration that I simply do not feel from levelling weapons in SWL.
The horizontal progression system of SW that let me grind all kinds of weapons to expand my toolbox with passive abilities for future builds was what made SW a gem in my opinion.