I used to play TSW when it came out way back when. I hadn’t played in a long time but wanted to get back into it because I remembered liking it. Now there’s a TSW Legends, which I loaded up, but saw that it gave the link for the classic TSW game. I went there, downloaded the software, installed it, paid for a month to reactivate it, and reactivated my three characters.
What’s the difference between the two. There’s some interface differences it seems. The classic one seems a bit less action-oriented, is that correct? I seem to see a slight difference in character details too, is one offering more customizations than the other? But I don’t understand the other differences, like… why are there two versions, why is one subscription and the other free to play with a store, how active are the two versions, etc.
Could someone fill me in on what happened over time? All I know is that Funcom says the game was rereleased and rebranded as TSW Legends, but TSW still seems to be there, so I’m trying to understand the bigger picture. Thanks for any information!
Thank you! I played both for a bit and found I liked the old one a bit better because the combat felt more like the RPGs I was used to, while the SWL seemed more action-RPG. Things like building up rage meters or frenzy meters or whatever, having a certain amount of time to activate a skill, being more restrictive with what your primary and secondary powers/weapons are, etc.
Aeryl said both are free to play. I must have missed that. I kept seeing how my account was locked and I renewed the subscription for a month to make it show as active.
One more question I have is that it looks like they’re pusing SWL more. Am I mistaken about that? When I would click on links for TSW, it’d redirect me to SWL, and Funcom’s links reference SWL. I would think if they were phasing out TSW, they would have done it by now and stopped being able to play it, but you can, so… do they plan on just supporting both? Are the communities strong on both?
For all intents and purposes, TSW is dead. The only attention it receives is the occasional server restart.
Updates to SWL may be few and far right now, but it still has a fairly active community.
As far as content goes, TSW has stuff that SWL doesn’t and vice versa. But all of the content in SWL is free, whereas much of it is paid DLC in TSW. Which brings me to one minor correction: SWL is completely free to play. TSW is buy to play. You can only access the content you’ve paid for.
Oh. Well that’s very much a shame. I don’t care as much for console-style game mechanics. I have an assault rifle, and I’m still not sure how the grenade launcher works, nor what the claws do. I’ll have to decide if I just want to stick with TSW for a bit and then move on to something else. I like the setting and how it’s presented, but I’m just not doing well with the combat system and powers in SWL. I’m finding them to be a bad fit for me.
TSW is b2p, SWL is f2p, which doesn’t mean much in your case since you have it from the past.
The difference is anyone can just download and jump into SWL, while to do the same they still need to buy a box of TSW. From your point of view both are free to play.
Both have subscription as an option, with the main benefit of reduced cooldown.
Both have store, SWL’s with the usual f2p-related p2w stuff beyond cosmetics, TSW mostly content (and also cosmetics).
In TSW you get store currency with the subscription, enough for one content upgrade for each subscribed month, with some leftovers for cosmetics. (SWL’s subscription only gives you lootbox keys…)
Not mistaken, they really are pushing SWL more…
No plans at all on supporting TSW. Very little plans, or close to none, on supporting SWL.
Dunno about the community numbers, I don’t log in too often anymore… if you plan to stick with TSW, check out its discord, they used to run NMs and Fusang too.