It’s a pretty grim time to be a fan of The Secret World. The other day I logged on for the first time in a while, and the game was just dead. Agartha was a ghost town. No one was talking in chat.
And this is just a few weeks after the announcement of Secret World Legends. Clearly TSW is not long for this world now.
One way or another, the future lies with Legends. For my latest article at MMO Bro, I look at previous relaunches of MMORPGs in an attempt to understand what might await TSW’s successor. The conclusions are less than comforting.
Superior Realities 
I’ll be very surprised if SWL ends up being more successful than TSW. As you say, it’s a five-year old game that’s not based on any pre-existing franchise. It will be lucky if it manages to transfer its existing fanbase across; the chances of developing a new one are slim.
On the other hand, the precedents you cite are intriguing. FFXIV clearly gained hugely for the reasons you outline but SWG is an interesting case. You’d have to do some digging to verify this but I believe the game was more commercially successful after NGE than before. Certainly the only reason it closed was because LucasArts didn’t want competition for SW:tOR. If it hadn’t been for licensing issues I’m sure SWG would still be running today.
I think the real upshot of all this, though, is that Funcom evidently want out of the MMORPG business altogether. It hasn’t made them enough money to sustain their business over the last few years and it looks as though they’ve decided that won’t change. The only thing that surprises me about all this is that they are keeping AO and AOC going at all. I guess license commitments may account for AOC and sentiment for AO – hard to believe either is making much money.
I’m a little bit afraid they shot themselves in the foot with parts of this, which breaks my heart. The announcement happening when and how it did means it feels like there’s no point in continuing to play the current game really, and the new one isn’t ready to try yet. So it stopped me a bit dead in my tracks on all the things I’d been working on and logging in regularly for. I was enjoying playing The Secret World and I am eagerly looking forward to trying Legends, but I am not sure how many other players will be willing to stick out this dead period. And I am not sure how many new players will come for Secret World Legends. I am very much hoping for the best, though. I’d like many more years of adventures with it.
I think next to a lot of unresolved questions on how to actually treat long term customers and loyal fans instead of making them feel like they were used and now better get lost, the most important question would be if the new system is fun.
Now, due to some NDA i won’t comment on that, but due to ESO lately having a free week, i now know how reticle combat can be done in a way which is fun.