Worst MMO Ever? - Secret World Legends 

I wish this game (or rather: what it was before Legends) would be remade as a singleplayer game or even a trilogy. The setting, quest design and story is too precious to go to waste.

this game had my fave quest ever of all time. you had to investigate a car crash, find info of the people who got attacked. then you had to alt tab out, check their id against a real website they setup and request a password change, to unlock their electronic device, that had a recording of what happened. took me an hour to figure that one out.

Worth noting that "The Secret World" (the 2012 MMO that existed before Legends) actually had a LOT more challenge in both combat and build complexity before it was systematically nerfed by the "New Player Experience" and finally lobotomized in Legends. The story is, was, and remains, however, amazing, like nothing in the MMO space. The "MMO aspects" of the game have always been its weakest parts from the beginning, however. Probably should've been single player RPG but Funcom got greedy.

Josh: "I had to endure this scene so you do to." Me: "No Josh, this is the time to fast forward." You hold no power here RU-vid Illuminati!

while the original release of the secret world was far from perfect, it was still one of the most unique mmos that ive had the pleasure of playing. not SWL though. all they managed to do was demolish the combat even moreso

The setting, writing, characters? All awesome. Would make an AMAZING Bioware style RPG. But for some reason the studio was adamant it be a mediocre MMO.

I was in love with this game around 2014. I loved it. I loved how the original game focused on puzzle solving and trying to solve mysteries and conspiracies. The skill system was second to none.

I love how Boone introduces himself as "The last of the cowboys" as if the Cowboys were secretly some kind of formal organization you have to work hard to be able to join, and not just a bunch of 'muricans who raised cattle and worked on ranches. It's like in 300 years, you walk into some dark closet in the back of the building and get introduced to "Kaine, last of the Janitors" who sees the evil filth in the world, and you need to team up together to "Sweep the evil out of the city..."

I cry inside when i think of what the game used to be. The "looking for the clinic" part was heartbreaking, because it took a glitch to get a glimpse of the good old days. Then you realize it's gone for good. RIP SW

I miss this game so much, it's a crying shame how funcom have handled it, it had so much potential before legends and has such a unique and fantastic story in the mmo space

this is actually a pretty decent game, all in all. It does have a shitty combat system. And its fairly big without much substance. But it has an amazing story and its expertly voice acted. Its just fairly boring. And tedious. I do love all the lore they've lovingly crafted for it. But yeah.

I was -obsessed- with this game some years back, before Legends. The storytelling and the puzzles are just wonderful, but I agree that the combat system is.... Quite bad. Secret World would have been better as a single player survival horror/puzzle game.

10:35 That "modern" feeling city actually is a 1:1 recreation of the Brooklyn Bridge area. I was actually a Founder member for TSW. What drew me in was the puzzles (that morse code one at the airport was a pain though), full VO, and the lore. Unfortunately I didn't have the best hardware to run it at the time and by the time I did they already had moved on to Legends. Sadge

31:22 is the EXACT reason why I LOVED Secret World so much. Many of the quests were like this and that's what made it fun. And the story and setting was always what attracted me to Secret World in the first place! But you hit the nail on the head about all of it, pretty much. Honestly, if they'd just make this a single player game with drop in-drop out co-op, it would be PERFECT! i would buy it and all it's DLC in a heartbeat.

Everytime I watch a video about The Secret World being a bad game or it dying, a part of my heart dies. I don't think I ever fell in love with "mmos" until I played The Secret World. Mostly because it was more than that. I actually felt important doing these quests, going around, solving riddles and puzzles, figuring out the mysteries of the world. It really is heartbreaking though, that Funcom has stopped caring about this game.

sad thing is the original "the secret world" was actually an amazing game . few years back after some research i found out the original serveres were still running while they released " legends"

I'm so glad I have experienced TSW when it was still alive. The investigation quests were so great and the skill wheel was amazing, even tho combat was whatever at best making build was an absolute blast. Even tho I know TSW and Secret World legend are ultimately different game, it pains me so much what it turned into. What a shame.

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Kirsten Geary from my time playing the original Secret World. I mean, she's a little cringey, but I thought it was charming. It came off as deliberate to me, that she was an upper-management corporate type who was vaguely out of touch with real people.

Man, I loved the secret world. Then they went and screwed all the diversity of the highly customizable combat and crafting system and dumbed down everything. It's like they pulled starwars galaxies with this mmo. It had issues, yeah, but not fixing them and killing the good parts was dumb as hell. Also, anyone remembers the siren song? I still sometimes dream of that song.

So one thing about Legends is that it took out one of the best aspects of the combat that helped make it fun: Make-A-Build. While a lot of the complaints Josh made are also problems of the original TSW (the combat has always been impactless), being able to create your own build with full access to all weapons, just need to expend AP and SP to unlock abilities, made it bearable.

If only this game was made by a better studio. Love the concept though.

Believe it or not the original Secret World was a brilliant game. Not aggressively monetized, insanely high quality story, innovative quests and combat and by far and wide the best atmosphere an MMO has ever had. The issue was that content quickly dried out after the initial launch. You can play that one same brilliant raid boss fight (that huge monster you saw in the dream intro) only so many times before slowly but surely the guild starts drying up. Then the vultures came, wrecked combat, added shop popups and turned this gem into Secret World Legends.. In over 20 years of playing MMORPGs, this is the one game that touched and resonated with me the most.

"having a really good game here that is actually held back by trying to be an MMO" is exactly how i would describe roughly 98% of MMOs released since WOW. the design process for a modern MMO is literally "take a good idea for a video game, develop the core gameplay loop, and then add anything you can find that might make playing it less fun."

The fact that Josh's first experience with this game was nearly 1:1 identical of what I experienced with the game, down to the Doctor dialogue breaking, is what made it for me. When I first saw the Worst MMO Ever series a while back I have been waiting for this one for a while, because I knew it wouldn't be good. lol.

I've always loved the ideas Funcom has come up with for their games. Anarchy Online, The Secret World, Age of Conan, but the implementation has always ended up lacking polish. As a friend of mine puts it "Funcom puts the F U in fun."

When I watch this, I get the same feeling I get every time I remember the old Secret World. I just wanna cry for what they did to it. Its funny how all the parts Josh liked were part of what made the original game special. Then they ripped some of those parts out (how leveling etc worked) put a weak "action" combat system on it and so we got this mess. I also don't remember the game regularly crashing for me. I really want The Secret World back, I really miss it.

So the Rap loving Illuminati director woman (forgot her name even though I just heard it) is a reference to something topical for the time the game came out. There were a lot of conspiracy theories from 2010-2014 about high profile rappers being in the Illuminati (Nikki Minaj, Jay Z, etc) and some rappers even played into it because it was funny and kept people talking about them. If you were at all into rap during this time, that's a somewhat clever joke.

This was literally the only MMO I've ever been able to reach end game with. (I play different mmos with my brother who's way better at them than I) but when they rebranded it changed the whole atmosphere and it felt like the player base died off

Man, I remember playing through that whole area before it was turned into Legends. I recall having a great time with the quests and the general setting of the game. The combat however, was not something I fondly remember; in spite of me using ancient eldritch blood magic to fight off these zombie abominations, I may have just been throwing wet noodles at them for how non-impactful it felt.

The combat revamp killed the game for me. Had a pretty good time playing the original game before that, the haunted carnival and that forest with the monster moths were pretty memorable and quite suspenseful.

I played this game with some acquaintances when we were on a hunt for an MMO we could all enjoy together. I created what I charitably described as "G-Man's disappointing cousin once removed." The story actually hooked me from the first moment, which is actually something a lot of mmos just can't do for me, and I might actually return to this game just to continue the story someday. A shame the gameplay couldn't catch up to the narrative.

The original version of this game (Pre Legends) was pretty amazing - one of my all time favourites. I wonder if it still starts the same way? I played Dragon faction and that intro has less conspiracy and is rather more pleasurable, though perhaps not suitable for RU-vid :p. Seriously though, some of the original quests are incredibly involved with Internet research with web pages for in-game organisations, going through real world literature or even decoding audible Morse code in real time. I played the story mostly single player until later and I recall that scene you played through comes up again (much) later... Zero crashes - but this was all pre-Legends. I feel like this is another game 'gutted', simplified and ultimately ruined. I've not touched the game since.

One of my tattoos was actually inspired by a Secret World investigation quest, in a way. When my mom passed away I went through...a lot, suffice to say. In TSW one of the investigations had me bouncing around translating some latin, and one of the phrases was "Non Sum Qualis Eram" - I am not what I used to be. So that is now sitting on my inner right forearm.

Playing The Secret World back in like 2012 was incredible. It was unlike anything else ever released, it was puzzling and intriguing, just a perfect mix of MMO and Horror...Too bad they ruined it.

The story is still, to this day one of my favorites, but man would I kill for something that actually has better gameplay, better optimized and brought up to date for the current setting of the world. There's a very solid, and was a solid RP scene here, and this is still one of the few games that got me into seeing how good storytelling could be...but what it lacks, made me stop playing it. Gameplay, bugs and optimization, things Funcom is never good with.

I think there are two big problems with the graveyard tutorial vs. the subway tutorial, beyond the fact that they're both dreams--one with the actual layout of the game and one with the way it affects the story. The events of the subway section do fairly clearly connect with some of the stuff that's hinted at in the first set of semi-prophetic dreams you have, and the idea that the Illuminati and Templar are using a dream sequence as a sort of tutorial is kind of neat (I'm not giving the Dragon version credit for that). Problems are: 1: In Secret World Legends, it's the second tutorial you're dumped into. And while it served a useful function in TSW, in SWL it's basically just re-exploring a bunch of stuff that the first, new tutorial now already covers. And because the subway tutorial was designed for a complete different combat system (old one was much more complex and MMO-y, although it was still not very good IMO), it ends up feeling a lot less effective at covering what it needs to to get you understanding the game. 2: In Secret World Legends, almost all the interesting story concepts that the subway tutorial *hints* at are explicitly stated in the graveyard tutorial. Even the characters you meet in the subway are people you have already encountered in the Manhattan fakeout fight. The space teaser at the end of the Subway is not an effective hint of something great and terrible because you've literally already seen Cthulhu burst out of the center of New York, so why would you care about a few planets? Like TSW, if you go rewatch that whole opening sequence up to the subway, it definitely still has a problem of taking like. 10-20 minutes to get to actual gameplay, and that's if you don't get lost trying to find the right NPC in your hub city. That was why they introduced the graveyard section; they wanted to break up the series of opening cutscenes by giving you something to do. But the issue is, like... Just inserting all these big setpieces completely undermines any attempt at subtlety in those cutscenes or the subway section. Like on one hand you've got these two strange figures in black and white giving you diametrically opposed instructions in a clear effort to sway you to their side, and then on the other the one who was saying it "wasn't her place to intervene, even if this is merely a dream" is handing you a shotgun and telling you to go ham on a zombie. And who cares what that big British voice trying to bribe you by offering the choice between losing everything and becoming a god is? You literally just fought Cthulhu. Again, the fact that there were so many cutscenes right off the bat was something that needed to be fixed, but they didn't really fix it; they just sort of jammed another thing into that sequence without adjusting anything to make it fit. Kinda just broke everything else around it.

I love Rosses Game Dungeon. He's played through some true gems over the years. Thanks for linking to his channel.

I played the original "The Secret World" when it just came out and I thought it was a nice new MMORPG with a cool occult settings and cool quests. The main stories was divided into these comic book issues type of thing, which I thought was cool. The sad thing was it was not very solo friendly at all, so after the first quest hub (the lovecraftian zombies), it got too difficult to solo (impossible, really) and I stopped playing it. I think I stopped at the quest hub with the zombies in the school or something... Sad to see that it was changed to this abomination called Secret World Legend.

Man I remember watching TotalBiscuit stream the original 'The Secret World' back in the day. Never tried the game myself, but it seemed like it had potential. Shame it has ended up in such a janky state.

Such a sadness to see Secret World here, but Legends really is a terrible reboot. Original was one of my favorites for atmosphere alone.

Looking forward to this one. This was the first game that made me really want more skill based progression systems in mmos.

I knew that day would come...this game was among my favorites when it got released. It had the best quests i ever found in an MMO, especially the investigation ones. but FC decided to shut it down to release this legends thing :( This video will hurt me right in the nostalgia. But not as much as when it's gonna be Anarchy Online turn >

See, hearing Josh talk about this was like him going back and looking over Neverwinter for himself. I was someone that played the Original: The Secret World -- I didn't have the highest ranked weapons but I was just under it with Black Bouillon tier, I had a Templar that was only a dozen nodes away from having the Panoptic Core unlocked, and when I transferred over to The Secret World Legends, I got to keep all my fancy outfits -- with the Paladin Deck/Suit being my favorite as a Pistols/Sword main. And even with the downgrade in mechanical complexity with the change to the weapon systems and a more action style combat over tab targeting, I found that Legends still held up to the original in many ways that still made it fun for me. My partner and I had a group of friends that played with us, and we started a fairly big RP guild that we used to kind of corral our characters together and of course foster a bigger RP scene in the game; we were even doing a sort of tangential long-form story along with waiting for the release of Japan. Something a lot of people probably won't know is that the game came in 3 stages really: Stage 1 -- The Base Game The tutorial section and Solomon Island (Kingsmouth, Savage Coast, The Blue Mountains), The Valley of the Sun God, (The Scorched Desert, Temple to the Sun God), and Transylvania, (Besieged Farmland, Shadowy Forest, Carpathian Fangs). Now, for the longest time in TSL: Legends -- this ran smoothly, you could play on the highest graphics without needing to worry about constant crashes, there wasn't much lag, the game while less difficult mechanically than TSL: Classic was still mechanically difficult enough that you had to worry about being swarmed by even lesser enemies unless you really knew your build or were playing with friends. The story is GENUINELY fantastic - and I feel like if there wasn't as much frustration with the crashes and the hiccups, it probably would have been far better for Josh but as he said in his Neverwinter video: New players aren't/can't play through our memories. Much of those starter quests that seemed like MMO busywork (some of which were a little inflated) were setups for different areas and flowed into one another neatly. Defending the old woman's house? There were different types of zombies that attacked from different sides of her house: Fast, Cultist, Draugr, and Regular. And when you finish, she asks you to burn the corpses to keep the bodies from attracting others. Only -- one of the bodies you add suddenly turns the fire Blue(? I'm colour blind, so bear with me) and that's an abnormal reaction, something that hadn't been seen before. Which is why she asks you to get bodies from different zombie types to burn and see which one was the culprit. Which then leads you to the cultist zombie area. ETC ETC. Or the dream sequences/light powers -- there used to be 2 tutorials in the game that went back to back kinda. The initial dream sequence and then the one you have at your faction hub which would explain that you're not really using real weapons but moreso the manifestations of your inner light. The 'fly' wasn't a fly, but was a Bee from the Agartha (which is sort of a World Tree/Honeycomb sort of thing) and the reason that you have magical powers is because Gaia, the spirit of planet itself bestowed that power on you. The dream sequence was to set up something that you'd only come to know once you get further in the game, but since it seems kind of genuinely unplayable now (even by my own reckoning, I tried to go back to playing it recently and even in Kingsmouth my PC chugs BAD), there's no reason to fault Josh for not finding out about this stuff. It's meant to be a slow burn meta narrative that runs in the background while you're focused on the immediate issues. The Illuminati dream sequence the doctor gives you is sort of replaying the original dream sequence/tutorial for people to experience what I think was called "The Tokyo Incident" which was when some fucked up supernatural shit happened in Japan and sort of made it so that the whole of Japan is cut off from the rest of the world as all 3 secret societies try to keep "The Secret World" a secret still. Stage 2 -- The Tokyo Release What REALLY fucked things up is the Tokyo/Japan patch -- you see, the original Secret World had the entire base game, and then an episodic release schedule where they fed more and more of "The Black Signal" arc at you -- I noticed an INTENSE dip in quality of the game stability when Japan came out even back when the game was still relatively popular and well received despite the criticisms of the combat. I went from being able to play the game comfortably on the highest setting to needing to drop several things down to medium or low. But it was still playable and didn't crash very often. I was still capable of getting through the story, but I got more and more frustrated as time went on because I eventually couldn't partake in any large-scale content like the Japan Dungeons/Raids. Stage 3 -- South Africa But THEN came the South Africa patches and I think this is where the game entered the death spiral. I don't know if it's something they did when porting the game over to the new servers or maybe something that went wrong in the code from how they set it up - but I began to be unable to play the game at all without significant hitches or stutters and eventually my partner and I just had to stop playing since we had identical rigs. It was SO BAD that I literally haven't even been able to complete the first quest in South Africa and instead have been ever so occasionally trying to log on ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Despite my love for the game and my genuine wish that people at least try it to see if they can play at least the base storyline: Things I WILL NOT defend however, are the Web Browser getting fucked up somewhere in the dev cycle and them just... never fixing it. Because it was genuinely pretty great, and was full of in-universe websites or in-universe versions of websites that was necessary for solving puzzles. Whether it's tracking down Amazon item codes or translating Latin or like the security camera mission tracking down specific businesses or houses, it was a diagetic way to solve the puzzles of the game and it is infinitely lesser for it. Or the fact that they shove so many microtransactions at you, or the fact that the original "Premium" has not only increased in price but also that they've shuffled more features that used to be in the base game off onto that. And the fact that they seemed to have taken out or perhaps misplaced the tutorials that explained the various functions of the game to you, like crafting or how the quest system works with Main quests and side quests and pauses and such. And the addition of pay to win busy work like the "Agents" system which is like an idle farmer where you send off 'agents' on 'missions' via your in-game phone so they can get stuff for you. With success chances based on the Agent and their skill level but you can purchase higher rank agents from the cash shop with better skills. It was a wonderful, oft-forgotten gem as TSL: Classic, something that very few people seemed to know about or want to play despite the low buy-to-play cost (something like $30-40). A rougher but still desirable but perhaps more approachable uncut diamond as TSL: Legends but now it's a "Please try this once before it's perhaps gone forever". If ever there was a game deserving of a committed community taking it out of the hands of the developers via Private Servers in order to keep the spirit of the game alive but without all the predatory cash shop or performance problems? It would HAVE to be The Secret World. I remember keeping an actual in-character journal IRL - keeping track of riddles, runic translations, latin translations, names and dates and serial numbers -- cryptic directions, NPC dialogue in case something innocuous they said was relevant, and running an in-character blog where I answered questions from people as a character from the world that had well... done it all. I was one of those people that loved the game so much that I went through and 100% all the zones for the unique items and cosmetic rewards. Played every quest, side quest, dungeon when it became plot relevant, raid. An In-universe guru that people could ask about problems they were having somewhere. Whether it was their builds, weapon choices, crafting and sigils etc etc. THAT is how good this game used to be... and now I look back at it and all I have are my memories, and the sour taste of ash that one of, if not perhaps my FAVORITE game has been reduced to this.

Before the release of Legends, TSW had one of the greatest communities I've ever had the privilege to be a part of and a large part of what made the game for me. Sadly, though, Legends brought an end to all that.

Finally he's covering this one. I always had an ambivalent view on TSW: The setting, characters, lore all were presented so incredibly well, bonkers, yes, but believable nonetheless. The different types of quests were refreshing to see, but often lacked a clear path for progression. Gameplay was pretty bad tho. Classes and abilities were both bland and unnecessarily convoluted. There were no real mechanics, only plain tab target based combat, extremely unengaging. Story and gameplay always seemed strangely at odds, as with most MMOs. So it probably shouldnt have ever been one.

"Ah yes, the tactical, defensive hammer." They can't attack you if they're dead - taps forehead smugly -

“Houston, we have a problem.” “Report.” “We overshot the moon.” “What.” “We overshot the moon, and arrived on Mars.” *”HOW!?* Oh nevermind, just film the landing anyway!”

Can I make an MMO recomendation here? I just wanted to suggest the "Wakfu" MMO it's pretty popular in France but I never heard from it from anywhere else. If I had to describe it it's a ftp turn based mmo with grid combat. And one of the most interesting features for me is that you can have 2 alts and have a team of 3 to do combats and dungeons

I was actually going to write up a big thing about the Investigation missions in this game, but I figure it's better to experience it. If anyone here is interested in trying this game- in that first town, Kingsmouth, head to the church. Inside is a quest, the first Investigation mission, called 'The Kingsmouth Code'. This is the quest that hooked me. Try completing it without using an online guide. For similar quests, lookout for 'Something Wicked', 'The Vision', and 'Digging Deeper' in the same town. These are quests with no real player direction. You have to think, reason, and may have to look-up and reference real-world things. It's very much what JSH here was reasoning the doctor quest would be.

I'd really, really like there to be more modern day MMOs. What SWL has going for it is good interesting story, great voice acting, incredible immersive atmosphere all throughout (but fuck Egypt zones), great variety of casual and street wear and great attention to detail. What it lacks is combat and progression, with the endgame being just repetitive dungeon grinding for the ever-increasing gear score. There is a lot of love put into this game, and even if a lot of missions were cut out in the SWL re-release, the developers clearly put a lot into it. It's a real shame the publisher had no interest in doing anything with SWL but milking it and pouring all the money into their Conan games instead of back into the game to continue the abruptly-ended story. Even the one new zone they added is maybe a fifth of the size of other areas, and is grindy and unsatisfying. Also the Templars tutorial intro has one of the best lines you could deliver in an MMO, "You're not the chosen one, and you're not the only one. You're part of an army!"

I’ve been waiting on this one. Regardless of how it ended up I think the complexity of the puzzles with some being basically like ARGs is something noteworthy this game had

I feel the original TSW had a rather decent, even great at times, combat system. All it needed was polishing animations and reduce lag. What the devs did when butchering it to make the living legends corpse of a game? Reduce it to a class system with weird gimmicky resource management on the weapons. All the freedom of mixing passives from all weapons gone, replaced by this linear crap, but they kept all the clunkyness they didn't bother to improve over the years. This game hurts me a lot, i LOVED the original, i met a lot of people through it, it has inspired me creatively in many ways. This shit couldn't even keep some of the previous atmosphere, thanks to it's overly crowded flashy AI they added for their new weapon system, or shit like the auto-grabbing missions with a loud female voice telling you about it are new as well... and well, could say more, but it's depressing to list everything. Also, the writing is excellent, sorry you couldn't enjoy it at times, probably from annoyance by the surroundings and crashing (that seems to be a modern issue) but it mixes being cheeky and irreverent at times, with some more serious and even creepy lovecraftian moments.

Secret World had so much potetial and such a unique take on the mmo genre. That sadly we will most likley never see an mmo like that again.

this game used to be amazing when it came out the storytelling was just soooo good. but they fked it up like all the other

My most memorable part of Secret World was the pre-launch event secrets. I really liked it and spent a good dam with my friend going apeshit over the clues. Like legit looking up manuscripts and whatnot. But somehow the actual game didn't stick.

This game was actually fantastic when it originally came out. I remember having actual nightmares from how creepy it was, the story was brilliant.

The moment you mentioned the quest not updating correctly, I thought to myself: "Oh, so that's why there's a pause quest option, so devs don't have to fix the quests that are buggy. You don't need to fix it, if the players can just redo it, hoping it doesn't glitch out this time".

Played this from the first day as "The Secret World"... when i got to the computer where you had to type in vivaldi.. it got me hooked.. there was even a mission you had to work out some morse code. The questing was some the best in a MMO i'd ever done.

I would still play this game on and off if we had more than one character slot. Usually, when I come back to an mmo after a year or more, I want to start fresh, but I also don't want to delete my previous character.

Loved this MMO, really one of a kind. But it has aged terrible. Still this MMO together with wildstar has a special place in my heart.

This game definitely sounds like it would suit a single player experience much better. It could be a really fun story focussed, single player game. Also the shotgun mechanic sounds really interesting and potentiality fun for tanking. I like to think of myself as a bit of a veteran tank player across multiple game genres and I'd love to play a functional version of that mechanic.

I was in the closed beta of The Secret World, and was so excited about it - it literally ticked all my boxes. Yes, the combat was shitty, but the questing was so interesting and in depth - in the first zone. Then I got through that and into Egypt, and it just went ... meh. I think I had a couple of the additional chapters (Venice, maybe), but the writing peaked in the first part and didn't grab me beyond that. Still, that first area though was awesome. Innsmouth, sorry, Kingsmouth, the burned out motel, the abandoned theme park, the weird university, the lighthouse with not Stephen King at the top of it ... so many good memories.

So glad to hear more people sharing Game Dungeon, Ross does such phenomenal work

I liked some things about this game. I remember doing a series of quests that were in a school overrun by zombies, it was awesome. The game did have a lot of issues though, surprised it's still around. Edit: wow, as I watched this review it all came back to me, and I'm pretty sure I went through the exact same thing you did where the dialogue glitched. I remember running around with that stupid tourist map and tearing my hair out and searching for the solution only to find out my game had glitched.

Secret World, in any form, has always been wonderful atmosphere, usually good (though not always consistent) story, enjoyable writing, and absolutely abysmal technical execution. Such massively wasted potential.

Oh man, I loved the original Secret World, and just the fact that they had fake, in-universe websites made for like, the lighthouse writer's books so you could search the ISBN codes for a puzzle and so on... It was really best to be played with a friend while talking through Skype, where you could figure out stuff together, and overall other players were helpful and if they saw someone stuck, usually offered help incase you needed it. The missions where you had to kill your character so you could see and interact with the dead, that was so great. And overall it had somehow a very welcoming player community, especially after WoW and such where i felt too intimidated to join raids because I wasn't familiar with all the acronyms, but I figure TSW draws in a less competitive playerbase. What really bummed me in Legends was the level restrictions (I love exploring to way higher level areas to see what's there even if I get my ass handed to me, and in a game about cryptids it just feels fitting) that they removed the glyph Assembly where you could craft new weapons and items. Like, I understand why they did it, it was real busywork, but to me it was super enjoyable when between playing with my friend I could spend time mowing down some enemies to get glyphs and upgrade my gear. The new tutorial in legends was an upgrade though, TSW felt more like being thrown at the deep end immediately. But, I didn't have really any glitches or major lag outside raid bosses in Legends, so the amount of them now is weird.

I loved the Secret World. The stories were creepy and intriguing and the required research in some quests was top notch. I would love to have another mmo like it.

The best story mmo out there. Treat it like a solo experience and it's quite good. Definitely worth a play-through. I played this entire game and never experienced a crash. Shame you had this experience.

The story driven experience of this game is second to none - theres always a layer of background deeper to go. (Oh, and it's a Bee that crawls into you not a fly - you do learn this at some point!) May be my favourite MMO - if it wasnt for the combat being so sluggish. Such a shame.

I'll be real, I played Secret World, the original, and had a good time with it, but I did have a bit of trouble getting behind the control scheme of the game. Everything felt a little jank, but the story was great, and the investigation missions had me and my friend thoroughly stumped for long periods of time, but we loved every second of it, so we dealt with the janky controls. When Legends came out, I did personally enjoy the fact that the controls felt a bit better to work with. That the build paths, which may have been more unique before, had been a bit more simplified and easy to understand. I was a tank, I used a hammer originally, and had blood on my back for some self healing/shielding. I had no idea if this was actually good or viable, but it worked for me. In Legends, I was hammer and shotgun, arguably felt much better, and I only knew about that combo because of their "class" system. I didn't care too much about the complexity being lost, because ultimately, my enjoyment of the game came from the story, and the world building, which were still amazing. My biggest complaint is that apparently, they just stopped updating legends to try and catch up to where Secret World was storywise. According to my friend, they started taking funds earned from SWL, stopped updating the game, and pumped those funds into Conan Exiles, a game that I personally love, but agree "Hey, maybe you shouldn't fuckin' do that." It's a game I will always look back on fondly, but due to general funcom incompetence, I don't know if I'll ever go back. I do miss it sometimes, as it was a gem of a game.

The setting, concept and inspiration (local myths and legends mixed with Cthulhu mythos) makes this one of my favorite MMOs of all time (being a horror, myth and all around lover of things spooky). Other 2 being City of Villains (mastermind is life) and Warhammer Online (best pvp experiences I ever had). With Conan also being close (I'm a suckered for anything that allows necromancy in games).

Thinking back on the game as someone who's played it, and on something you said in the review, I honestly feel like the game might have been better serviced as a Soulsian single player rpg, instead of an MMO. Think Remnant, but before it was even a thing.

As a casual player I much prefer Legends over the original format. It is more fluid to play, more like Guild Wars 2 in combat mechanics. Except for the Agents which are a pointless addition, SWL improved as far as I'm concerned. But the game is unplayable since I got a 4k setup with continual crashes. The lore and story are awesome, far stronger than the game design itself. But it's not FUN to play, much of the game is very dark and a bit sludgy to get through, if someone is expecting a fun adventure this ain't it. I wish it could be released, updated with new graphics and mechanics. I'd be back in a heartbeat.

Be kind to this game;). The investigation quests were the best and I wish they keep updating the game.

I always say this is my favorite Story based MMORPG - the missions are a blast, the story is so interesting and crazy at times. I would 100% play a Secret World 2, with current day combat, well optimized and a new story to follow along with.

actually, Arkham is present in Lovecraft's works, so they were probably drawing the name from that.

Commenting preemptively as this is one of my favorite games of all time. A perfect game for a solo or co-op romp. The story, missions, setting etc. We don't have enough urban fantasy games as it is. Gotta say: I feel like the only one that NEVER has crashes in this game. My friends get them, you get them, etc. I haven't ever had the game crash in my 230+ hours of the game

YES! I absolutely love this game, fully conscious that it is a pile of crap in every way.

I found most writing and voice acting to be top of the line for MMOs, especially of it's time. Combat was always a bit weird and something I had to get into with TSW and SWL both. As for you crashing five times before even getting to fucking Solomon Island... yeah I have played that part of the game about thirty times or more with different toons and never had the game be this unstable. I honestly cannot even remember the last crash but I am pretty sure crashes did happen. Like once a week or so. Hate to be the one saying it this time but it might actually have been on your end. Unless they really managed to fuck something up in 2022 and break the game in maintainance mode.

Always nice to see Ross get some shoutouts. He’s one of the hardest working content creators on this platform and his channel is pure gold.

I've got fond memories. Dragged a friend in to this game blind about two years ago. It was fantastic. Gameplay grievances aside, we were both very much focused on the lovecraftian experience. There's one point where you go on a very trippy, incredibly well designed dream quest type experience in what I believe is the second zone that still stands out as one of the best quests I've ever played in an MMO. But everything you've said is spot on and I can't find any real ground to dispute anything even though part of me wants to give the game some sort of defense.

I really want to play this. I liked the "cringe" and cliche parts. Is there some class that doesn't have annoying reload mechanics? Maybe the crashes can be resolved with compatibility settings?

Man, as a long time Ross Scott fan, I just want to thank you for giving his Game Dungeon series some love - I'd love to see you guys do a colaboration, I bet the Worst MMO Ever series would be right up his alley, especially after his video about Games As A Service and his well-stated opinions on always-online games.

i was actually getting excited with him when he started looking at the clues and the map, and investigating the area only to find out his game bugged and it wasnt necessary at all to actually have fun

"Lack of combat variation" he says, while NOT BUYING ANY SKILLS..... Some top tier PEBKAC.

I was wondering when Josh would get to this. I actually love this MMO, so I'm curious to see what he has to say (I'm expecting it to be absolutely crushed, and I have zero issues with that)

Love the world, the story, and nearly every zone created. The most unique and fresh take on Hell I've ever seen. But yeah general combat and forced skills destroying the freedom of your build just destroy it bit by bit. And I did not realize how much Legends was different, I gave it 30 minutes and just saw a new section and then the first zone was just a repeat of the original game.

I like to think the Illuminatti girl is SUPPOSED to be insufferable: like a millennial who got too much power, and you can't wait use your own manipulations and power plays to take her down a peg

My two cents before the video goes live: OG supporter of the game back in 2012. Best quest design in MMO history. People playing this game with Wikis never unterstood how this game was meant to be played.

I still play The Secret World (what came before this one) semi-regularly. I love the atmosphere and the class system is so engaging. I knew when they rebooted it that I wouldn't like this new version lmao... kinda sad.

Strange way to misspell "Most underrated"

I miss the complexity of some of the missions in this game.. how every piece of paper was different, everything was a clue. It really felt like a living world. I can't say I experienced any lag or crash when I tried it myself though.

This game has fantastic story telling, voice acting, setting, etc. My main con is that the game has awful controls for combat. But if you map everything to a controller, the combat actually becomes really fun. Also, some of the mobs are a little too aggressive. But it isn't as bad as some places in WoW where you can aggro just from respawning.

We need more modern MMO's like this but better gameplay. I agree with alot of people on Secret World og was more challenging.

I loved The Secret World when it came out. Illuminati all the way! Guns and force power. The problem I had with it was that gear optimization for the class system was really difficult to understand, so knowing if you would be good in a raid was hard to determine. Also, it came out during the flood of MMOs around WoW Wrath of the Lich King, so I'm sure it got lost in the noise. Podcasts were also really popular at the time and WoW had really good ones to listen to that built knowledge and community. TSW had a few but were really bad and did not really teach you anything or help explain more difficult aspects of getting into end game content. Those were the only issues I had with The Secret World at the time. When I went back to it a while later I played Legends, and they "fixed" all the wrong things and made it so frustrating and worse. The original version was so much fun, more normalized keyboard/mouse combat control, intent of concept to ambience achieved, and the puzzles were great for me who has a high tolerance for not having to look stuff up. So sad to see it go to this Legends version which I just don't want to play, even though I love the concept and world so much. RIP The Secret World. Good riddance TSW Legends.

That seems like a game world that has so much potential. I can't help but think of how great a game you could have if you took that world, setting and storyiine and designed it as a single player horror experience like a Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Imagine this but with SCP'S. You have your choice of three factions to choose from. The GOC, The Serpents Hand, or the SCP Foundation.

Loved the premise, loved the Lore, loved the Setting and most of the Quests. I would be eager to see all this Content realized with a new Engine aka "Secret World 2"

I played this game before it was Legends. It had its issues but the story wasnt so jumbled. All the same story lines where there (not the dream after eating the bee) but they integrated so much better, you were given you main mission for your faction but the stories of the people you meeting were weaved in so much better. It wasnt a MMO by the end (was a t the beginning), I really think they could redo this game and make it more like Dark Souls in that its all solo based but you can ask other agents to join in and help. The story of this game is what all MMOs should strive to be. I loved this game so much I did multiple video guilds, check them out (they arent reliant anymore but I know they helped a good number of people and I spent time on them and made them with love). I had a cable mate go to a con once and talk to one of the devs and tell the guy how I hated Egypt; I didnt hate the zone I just thought it wasnt as good as the other 2 (at the time there was only 3). I pour one out to all my Secret World friends out there from England to the US all the way to AU, we will meet again. And the Dragon Guild will rise once more (if you get the reference message me I would love to hear how you are doing).

Legends added all the handholding... the original game was really difficult and required a LOT more thinking. It was devastating to see it become what it had. They did this right after adding a custom museum system where you could get special achievements that gave you exhibits to decorate a museum with. Oh yeah, and I lost all of my cosmetics that I paid for with the transfer over, so I'd have to buy them all over again...