With the launch of The Secret World, the game’s Lead Designer, Martin Bruusgaard has some things he’d like to share with us about the game.
Martin has released the first of three blog posts dedicated to highlighting things players may not have known about TSW.
The first post from Bruusgaard covers The Secret World‘s single server technology and what it means to the players.
Although it may be confusing for new players at first, it’s important to note that when the client asks you to pick a dimension, you’re not chosing a server. There is only one server for the game and all the dimensions exist on that server.
Because of this, players can select any dimension they like as their home dimension and still be able to play with their friends on other dimensions. Funcom has set The Secret World up so that players can meet with their friends on any dimension simply by clicking “Meet Up” next to the name of the friend they wish to play with.
Players will also be transfered into the appropriate dimension when invited to a team and will be allowed to freely trade with one another.
This freedom also applies to cabals and PvP.
Because of the single server system, cabals — TSW‘s version of guilds — can contain members from all dimensions. Players in the same cabal but on different dimensions will share the same chat and have access to the cabal bank as well as be able to perform all the normal tasks like grouping and trading.
As for PvP, players are allowed to participate cross dimension with one exception; Funcom has limited Warzones to a dimension-by-dimension basis.
There are a few reasons for this. First, in order to prevent lag in warzone areas, a cap of 225 — 75 slots for each faction — has been placed on them. If there were only one warzone for the entire server, most people would never get to play.
Second. Funcom hopes to foster a good PvP community for each dimension where players get to know each other. This is kind of hard to do if you have too many people trying to play in the same warzone.
For those wondering about how all this cross-dimension stuff will affect the game economy, the answer is that the economy is also shared across all dimensions. Players can trade and sell freely.
Bruusgaard has added a few extra notes about the single server tech, such as Facebook connectivity. He also assures players that once they have chosen a dimension they don’t have to worry about whether or not they have transferred unless they actively choose to move to another. So, if you’re one of those people who just want to play with people that you already know and have chosen the same dimension as you, you can do that too.
For a more detailed rundown on how TSW‘s single-server tech works. Hop over and check out the post on the game’s site, and then let us know what you think.
