Shocking news: Final Fantasy XIV is not the only MMO I play actively. I’m also pretty invested in Secret World Legends, the streamlined successor to The Secret World (which I also played since its beginning).
Thanks to my Grandmaster status (a lifetime subscription in plain English) I can drop in and out of playing SWL without feeling I waste time I have spent money on. Something which sometimes nibbles on my conscience when I’m prevented from playing FFXIV for a longer time while my subscription is active. So for me personally it’s a good thing to have on the side.
While setting and theme and most of the mechanics of play are totally different from FFXIV, there are some similarities.
Both games allow the character to learn every role in the game. FFXIV achieves this through the job system, while SWL assigns the roles of tank and healer to certain weapons. You can play a damage dealer with each and every weapon, you just need to avoid the tanking/healing specific skills and traits.
Both games are very story oriented. Expect a lot of cutscenes, all of them including voice acting, a compelling main storyline and lots and lots of side missions filling out the lore of the world.
Both games reward exploration, SWL even more so than FFXIV. Scattered throughout the game world are bits of Lore, detailing events, people, places and the monsters inhabiting it. You can even find these so called “Legends” in instances and missions.
A lot of people dislike Funcom, but in my experience each and every single game I played from them brought me more enjoyment than frustration. And you can expect more screenshots from SWL, now that I have finally checked and rebound the keys for that.
I’ll also be streaming the progression of a new character in SWL starting probably tomorrow. Just to let you know.
