I'm going to be honest, I kind of found the old gameplay to be a bit cumbersome and the in-game browser, while a really cool gameplay mechanic, just a bit confusing if you had no idea what you were looking for. So, maybe the update will be good for me... I feel like I'm going to get bemoaned for saying this...
Would he still need to be apart of the same secret society or can he be Ilumanati while I play Templar and still play together?
The old gameplay was cumbersome. The new gameplay is worse. The browser is the same.
SWL supposedly has "action combat". It isn't. They hid the click-to-target interface behind an on-screen reticle; healing doesn't participate in the "action combat", you have to select people with the function hotkeys. They decided that casting five builders to do a power attack was boring/not "action" enough, so now you spam weak power attacks until you run out of energy and have to spam weaker "builders". Your second weapon might as well not even exist save as a few more "power attack" shots.
Progression is hell. You get ability and skill points still but there's nothing worth spending them on; all of the attacks are identical between weapons and the gimmick manipulation is boring. But if you give Funcom money you can buy skill points and passive stat boosts with no level restriction, so you can directly buy power.
Gear is the worst because it's a pay to win scam; either you buy the real cash items to skip the progression system or you have to exponentially "feed" gear to your gear to level it up. You have to level two common weapons to make an uncommon, then another two to make an uncommon to upgrade your weapon to rare, so on and so forth. And the experience requirements to level an item increases by quality level.
And you have to do with for all seven talismans and two weapons, And their glyphs. And you pray you don't find an "upgrade" because then you have to start all over.
In general, upgrades only come from cash shop loot boxes. You pay real money for a chance at gear that is superior to what you'll find in dungeons and the like.
They removed the AEGIS system completely because they're too incompetent and lazy to actually fix bad mechanics. But of course AEGIS still exists in the lore and there are missions that require you to play with AEGIS equipment.
This game is horrible.
well, you can still go back to the original game, and i'd very much recommend it as the right way to experience it, lack of future content be damned.