Convince me of SWL

She may still have her teeth and her claws, but what she doesn’t have is her income. The great migration, we are told, was a financial necessity.

Yes, and that was cash shop revamp - they could have done that in TSW
There is absolutely nothing else here in SWL that could NOT have been done in TSW

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They couldn’t take away existing players’ sprint unlocks and turn them into $25 per character (instead of 12 million pax) without getting just about as many people angry.

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No but they could have added it as the “new way to buy them” And tbf - that is what they did when we came here to SWL - we actually had to buy with cash stuff that was actually free before like sprints and inv space etc but you know what i mean.
I see nothing any different except less than what TSW has. So unless you meant that then yeah, they couldn’t exactly just take everything away lol - but they did.

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Reasons to play:

  • The story is the richest most detailed of any MMO, including other heavy-story MMOs like FFXI & XIV, SWTOR, and LOTRO. If you’ve already played TSW through Kaidan, then South Africa stories are the only new ones and SA is very very tiny compared to the other zones – about an evening’s worth to fully 100% complete SA including all but the true-believer achievement.
  • Combat starts to get MUCH more fun around Elite-5 level and up, particular with the Occult Defense scenarios that do not have an IP-lock on more difficult fights; ie. you can do higher level stuff if the waves at your level are too easy.
  • The community, once you find it (/chat join sanctuary), is one of the best in any MMO – it’s right up there on par with FFXIV’s mentor chat if you’ve experienced that.

Reasons not to play:

  • Low level combat is so absurdly easy that it’s boring. It’s nearly impossible to die as a lowbie.
  • Gearing costs are heavily front-loaded – most of the demand comes at a very low level after which it’s just a long grind to improve your acquisitions.
  • The UI is a huge impediment: barriers to grouping, guilding, character control (can’t re/bind all actions), camera control (gotta flip into/out-of camera mode), and even chat (only a couple global chats that mostly go unused).
  • Severe crash bugs are just uncommon enough to lull you into thinking all is fine until BAM you’re out right in the middle of intense combat. Some seem to have gone unfixed and unaddressed since 2017 (CF & zoning crash bugs). Considering they have a stack trace from these if you click “send to funcom”, they should be trivial to fix, too.
  • Due to chat & cabal barriers, stagnant AH, slow group queues, and no bug fixing, it feels like a dying game on bare minimum life-support compared to well, all other MMOs I’ve played.
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I just realized nobody has actually mentioned performance yet. Somehow, don’t ask me how, Funcom managed to make SWL even worse than TSW in that regard.

On most days, the game’s performance is merely decidedly sub-par for a six year old game; on a really bad day, SWL gives me “trying to run a current AAA FPS title on an early-90s IBM PC” vibes. (Done trying to play for today, I guess.)

If one were an “all about performance” gamer, that’d be a HUGE reason to steer clear of SWL.

Have the opposite experience here. Performance in TSW was at times mediocre, while performance in SWL has gone up - no FPS issues pretty much anywhere.

Interesting. For me, most days, SWL is basically just-like-TSW, which always was a bit bad.

But on the worst days, for minutes after each zoning, the entire game runs like the old “everyone on the pinata golem” dogpile in TSW.

I am curious from a technical pov how that kind of unpredictable performance is even possible. It is almost certainly not a server-side issue (given that should cause similar problems for everyone), it’s probably not a connection issue (unless it is a very SWL-specific routing issue), so I’m tempted to think the local client is probably somehow “doing it wrong” at times.

I have much better performance too

But on the worst days, for minutes after each zoning, the entire game runs like the old “everyone on the pinata golem” dogpile in TSW.

Sounds like your problem is texture loading, either from the hard drive or to the GPU. I have SWL installed on an SSD and a mere nVidia 970 and it has never bogged down at all.

TSW on the other hand would crap out at the community events on the same hardware.

SWL’s still the worst game I play (not that I have a huge number of other ones… mostly just Warframe) but TSW was unplayable in events, dropping to 0 fps and 5 second ping, and SWL is just stuttery but playable.

I do have a very noticeable frame drop any time I switch reticle off and on, eg. opening my inventory, but that’s the same as turning TSW’s UI on and off (ctrl+x or whatever) so I assume it’s just doing that badly. A lot of the improvement personally is cause I have 25-30 items in my inventory instead of 250-300. I know it was bad in TSW but the game made it so easy t odo that.

SWL was so bad that i uninstalled and went back to TSW where it has far more to do even now with SWL’s supposed “new content”.

The ability to pick your own dungeons AND more dungeons than SWL including tokyo manu A/B, Group Scenarios, 3 faction based PVP grounds, Shambala has rewards for WINNING that actually mean something to your gameplay, a whole host of abilities that synergise with your team mates, a multitude of builds to work with, gear progression … and more.

With up to 30+ players online (more than what my own friends list was in SWL at times), I added 7 new names in one day. Keys are still available and you DON’T have to have a GM account to play or return.

(this is not flaming funcom, this is highlighting i personally didn’t like the reboot and felt the previous version called TSW was FAR superior to SWL - hence my return to TSW)

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I agree. I also uninstalled SWL at the start of the year and I don’t miss it one bit. I haven’t fully thrown myself back into TSW yet, as I have a lot of things happening in other games, but I do intend to as soon as I have time. It’s a far better game.

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I couldn’t imagine going back to TSW unless it was with a crowd of friends. If I wanted to make new friends I would do so in a new game, not the dead husk of an old one. So I’m sticking with SWL.

Believe me - its anything but a dead husk lol If anything, SWL is a shadow compared to TSW - Just look what they did to Padurri as an example and OFC No need to make new friends when a lot of your friends are already here! :smiley:
(you would be surprised)

I’ve played both games extensively and I’m well aware of the pros and cons of both. I can also say without a doubt that the people I played TSW with have moved on from both games and there’s nobody and nothing left to draw me back into it. If your situation is different, good for you!

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Likewise :smiley: I’ve had more fun in TSW doing stuff you can not do in SWL and that suits us all perfectly :smiley:

Me, too. But those are all things I’ve already spent years doing before SWL was even announced. And what few regrets there are (like never finishing NY NM) aren’t enough to get me to look back. I’d rather face new challenges, and those surely aren’t coming to TSW.

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Well you already mentioned one you hadn’t done. But i get where you are coming from, I really do.
I like many others just miss all the wonderful things you can do in TSW that you can’t do in SWL.
That also surely isn’t coming to SWL either.
SW (without the L) in general is a fantastic game and some play both. SWL for the updates etc and TSW for all the other stuff. Which is great :smiley:
There’s plenty life in the ole gal yet :smiley: <3

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