This question goes out to the devs more then anything. Will there ever be anything new?
I, much like many players I assume, have come to the conclusion that the answer here is no.
But I feel as though we should have an undeniable answer to the question.
Again, like other players I assume, I’d be ok with the fact that the game won’t go anywhere further.
What I’m not ok with though, is the lack of an answer, if the game won’t go anywhere, as to why the rest of it not being implemented, to wrap up the game as a single package?
What I mean by this, as an example: fixes to the difficulty of the game, making it a bit more challenging.
Fixes to the currency system so it functions in such a way to keep people playing.
Patching in past events that were in the legacy game into this one, like Samhain’s the rider cometh?
Or patching in other assets from legacy, like the missing dungeons, edited to not include Aegis, the PVP arenas, and missing cosmetic assets? Or even giving out Aux. weapons again as gadgets.
If this were a complete game, with no plans for the future, you’d still get new players coming in to check it out, and returning players wanting to RP or run dungeons, much like how it is now, but at least the official expectation would be that the game’s development is done, and the players that do return, I feel would have a much better time with it, instead of reminiscing about the “good old days” so to speak.
I see no reason as to why patching and warping up the game, and saying “that’s all folks, we’re done.” would be bad at this point. At the very least it would be satisfactory if not neutral instead of mildly disappointing. So what’s up? For those of us who played TSW, and want to get friends into an experience similar to the original TSW, seeing as legacy is also never going to be brought back for new players, and is seems like SWL won’t have any new updates with more challenging, or at the very least new content. Why not just wrap things up and call it a day?
He does say later on that they want to do things with IP if and when they can, so I think it’s a textbook case of something forgotten in the attic. You care about it enough to not throw out, but not to do anything with.
Another reason to not turn on maintenance mode proper is that most of the time it implies turning cash shop off, and the game is probably still paying it’s own bills, so to speak. I would definitely respect the more if they stopped straddling the fence, but whatever. If they couldn’t keep up with the game with full dev team, it is plain to see that with 3 active projects any work on the game is highly unlikely. We had to wait for almost a year for people to get an outfit that was already in the game, and some are still waiting for awards for last Anniversary community event from FUncom.
P.S. Also for all intents and purposes, the game is in maintenance mode, the playerbase as you rightly noted is in maintenance mode pattern where there’s a small amount of players checking out the game, but a large influx is pretty much our of the question, last one was alongside the rebalance patch, and even that I imagine was mostly existing players. I know games that entered actual maintenance mode years before SWL’s last patch that still have more players on steam than SWL which I find to be very ironic.
Funcom’s own estimates of an “amortization period” for an IP run over 5 years. Seeing as 2017, when SWL was released, was over 5 years ago, I’d guess it has overrun. These estimates, as I can easily find evidence, start in 2016 with TSW, and thus began again in 2017 with SWL. We’re beyond that.
I’d love for Funcom to prove me wrong. They have an amazing IP, but they’re throwing it away. For what it’s worth, their closest competitor in my mind, in terms of concept, World of Darkness with VtMB2, is also miles behind the curve, so there’s still hope. But I have grave hopes.
I can understand not wanting to do any heavy patch work at the moment with other projects on the line, with the addition of the fact that they are probably still getting at least a decent pay check from the purchase of Aurum. I’m a little confused with the term ‘maintenance mode’ but I’m going to go forward with the assumption that it basically means their still working on things slowly.
I think the frustrating thing to watch is that, with SWL being in maintenance mode light (Again, as long as i’m understanding the use of the term correctly.) is that it feels as though the game broke a precedent of having all it’s pieces in place before being left for other development. I actually don’t mind the idea of the game being done, even though the consent its self is still unfortunate. It’s just, it feels like it wasn’t fully realized before production halted. Unlike their other MMOs which more or less put things together in a way that they fit with one another up until the point they were no longer being updated beyond repeating seasonal events.
Maintenance mode explicitly means that there is no active development of the game and it’s only being maintained in as much as necessary to allow access to it. It doesn’t mean that it won’t happen (although in overwhelming majority of cases it won’t) it just means that there’s no work being done currently. It’s also a custom, and a sign of good manners on the part of developers, to shutter cash shop and tech support (since there’s no more income) for the game, some games make cash shop items free, some don’t, but there’s usually no payment processing going on, I assume because taking people’s money involves some legal obligations they usually don’t want to face when it comes to essentially abandoned games. Hence the guy in the video saying “kind of maintenance mode”, they still have cash shop and support, which is honestly nice for new players.
From what I can see, my impression is that all the dev time that could have been allocated to SWL went into making a rebalance patch, and afterwards the person that was working on it got pulled to work on Conan and maybe other games. Whether the rebalance patch was intended to bring new players or just serve as a bow-tie on the game we will probably never know. I think it would have made for a nice send off before actually announcing end of development if it was finished (there was supposedly a second pass in the works for DPS weapons), but we got what we got, at least it made the game slightly less broken.
Thank you for the clarification!
The rebalance patch was nice for what It was. It would have been better for there to be more attention to the difficulty curve of the game, to make it a better experience for Cabals and parties in the world instances. But the game did/does feel better in solo after the patch.
On a personal note, I think another one of the reasons SWL seems frustrating in it’s current state, is because of the lower difficulty curve, and the fact that I still like playing with a group. I also just lament the fact that I can’t buy new copies of TSW legacy anymore, as I would love to give the group of new players I’ve been playing with lately a more challenging experience pre-Kaidan.
You can still find unused digital keys for the old game, if you’re looking, sometimes you’ll even find unopened physical copies for sale. Your friends would have to buy DLC from the cash shop though.
Yeah, I know you can. But it’s a bit of a gamble if the keys work or not. We actually talked about it as an option, but none of my friends wanted to drop $40 on a game that may, or may not work.
Thankfully they seem to be enjoying the story enough, that the ease at which we’re taking down everything doesn’t seem to bother them. I can still tell they’re a little disappointed when we take down one of the wandering mini bosses in about 6 seconds though. Especially since all of us are running level 10 characters and have no upgrades to our gear.
Wandering champions in zones are scaled for one person, but each zone has one or two group scaled champions, those should be bullet spongy enough at level. Check their locations here. And in later zones like CF even solo champions can be difficult to deal with straight away.