Spring is here, and with it comes a ton of new content for MMOs as well as the ever-increasingly common rebirth of MMOs into a free-to-play model. This month for MMOCO, we have a cohesive theme of death and rebirth: TERA is getting a new Valkyrie class (the arbiters of life and death), Neverwinter has announced a new content expansion focused on an army of the dead, and The Secret World will be reborn as Secret World Legends.
Secret World to relaunch as Secret World Legends:
The Secret World, originally released in 2012, started off as a subscription based MMO, but shortly thereafter switched to a buy-to-play model with an optional subscription. Now, five years later, Funcom has announced that The Secret WorldSecret World Legends.
Secret World Legends won’t just a be rename with a new pricing model, however, as many of the game’s systems are being overhauled and modernized. Funcom says that the redesigned combat system will make action feel more natural, the quest progression will be more fluid, and the game’s visuals will be enhanced. The game will have microtransactions, but as is becoming more and more common these days, everything can be earned in-game without paying any real-life money.
Because Secret World Legends is essentially a new take on the older game, characters from The Secret World will not carry over into Legends. Lifetime subscriptions, virtual currency (I’m guessing Funcom shop credits), and some select vanity items will carry over. Interestingly enough, Funcom promises to keep The Secret World servers running alongside the Legends servers, for players who don’t want to start from scratch in the new game.
New Valkyrie Class Launching in TERA This Week:
A new class is launching in TERA’s Honorbound Update, which is dropping April 11th. The Valkyrie (restricted to female Castanic characters) is a fast-paced melee fighter, specializing in combat with Runeglaives that carve runes into everything they hit. To celebrate the Valkyrie’s launch, Enmasse is offering two special events during the month of April. Players who log into TERA between the Valkyrie’s launch on April 11th and April 30th will receive a free character slot in their item claim box. Correspondingly, the character cap on characters per server has been increased to 17, so as to allow all players to create a new Valkyrie on their chosen server without any problems.
The second event rewards players for leveling a Valkyrie to level 2 by April 30th. If they do so, they’ll receive a special Valkyrie Rewards Box that contains a 15-day pet, a combat-focused everful nostrum, and a level 15 Valkyrie Rewards Box. The reward box will keep on giving new reward boxes for every handful of levels up until level 65. For the truly hardcore levelers, however, there will be special titles for players who level their Valkyrie to levels 30, 58, 60, and 65 in the first 24 hours following the update.