Hey all, brand new to the boards, and I was just coming in to see what the state of the game is in late 2023. Is the game still active? Will I be running into other people if I start playing, basically is there still life to it? Are there updates at all and any kind of roadmap going forward? What are the big differences between SLW and TSW. I’ve never played SWL. I understand it’s free to play, but do you actually have to spend piles of money to get any enjoyment out of it lol? Can you play co-cp, and of course the big question…is there any talk of a sequel? I on
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SWL has a small but active population. You will run into other players, but rarely in the wild (outside of hubs) as the player cap in adventure zones is intentionally kept low.
There’s no update roadmap or any talk of sequels.
The differences between TSW and SWL are too numerous to get into within the scope of a brief post. SWL is completely free to play while TSW is the older, buy-to-play incarnation of the game. Official sources for CD keys to create TSW accounts no longer exist, so if you wanted to play that one you’re at the mercy of third party resellers.
You do not need to spend any money to enjoy the game.
The main story is designed to be completeable by a solo player. You can group up for missions, but you will also encounter solo instances that separate you from anyone you may be grouped with. There is also dedicated group content and, to a lesser extent, PvP.
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You will run into a small amount of players in starting zones, but as you will progress through the story your chances of meeting people in the wild will significantly decrease, regardless of the cap, as most people that are doing endgame content spend their time in Agartha or city hubs.
When it comes to the game’s population in general, there are two things to consider. One is that almost all of the story content is completable solo (you might need to overlevel the dungeons a little bit) and even if you don’t want to do it solo it’s fairly easy to find someone in Agartha / City hubs to help you with a dungeon. Keep in mind that SWL’s chat system is quite arcane and the channels only cover their own zone, so for example if you’re in the first zone of Kingsmouth Town, general chat will only cover all instances of Kingsmouth, and as such most adventure zones chats are silent. Agartha and City Hubs channels such as LFG or Trade are the most active if the goal is to find other players.
Endgame content participation is dwindling alongside the playerbase, but it’s still possible to do every single bit of content in the game, especially if you join a cabal (guild). Although for some particular high-tier endgame content events have to be scheduled due to small number of players capable of doing them, and even gathering a 10 people group for a lair (content that pretty much anyone that reached level 50 can participate in) can be challenging during the off-peak time (in a pinch those are still doable with 5 people, so it’s not a catastrophe or anything).
As for P2W aspects, if you feel like spending a little bit of money, the only thing worth buying is patron subscription as that will boost your progression speed by about 50% when it comes to unlocking things, and everything else is either not worth buying at all or ridiculously overpriced. There is absolutely 0 need to pay for anything though.
Bottom line is, playing through the story solo is worth it just for the experience, imo. but set your expectations accordingly if you want to do endgame group content, during some times of the day (especially if you’re not in EU) it can get pretty quiet.
P.S. Don’t use Activity Finder to find anything.
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Activity finder usually works for story mode dungeons because low level players haven’t heard to not use it yet. Stop telling people not to use it and it’ll work as intended.
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Even back in 2018 when I did the story first it took me well into several hours to find an SM dungeon via AF.
This year when I was playing through on an alt, I queued for every single SM dungeon I could while in level bracket and got 0 hits over literally dozens of hours of queueing. (That’s during peak EU times, going into US evening, by the way)
So, while you’re definitely welcome to queue and wait for nothing, I’ll keep telling people to save time and just find someone in LFG in like 5 minutes tops.
I’ve been playing an alt recently and had several pop through activity finder. Clearly a YMMV thing.
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