Ragnar Tornquist reveals more of The Secret World

The tantalizing bits of information continue to flow this week from the horror-laden streets of The Secret World for those souls interested in this dark MMO full of secret societies and mythical monsters. In the second installment of the community Q and A with the game's Director, Ragnar Tornquist, players are treated to another tasty batch of information on both PvP and PvE elements, as well as things like normal MMO-style classes (tip: better change your thinking about classes now) and how gear will work in the world.

While there are many things that are still only being hinted at due to the complex (and still in-development) plans for the game, it's still an interesting glimpse into just what the development team is looking towards building into The Secret World. If your questions weren't answered this week, don't worry -- there's still another installment coming next Wednesday that will offer even more tasty tidbits of information on this anticipated MMO. In the meantime, you can check out our first look from GDC and spend some time sharpening up those puzzle-solving and zombie-killing skills. You're going to need them.

Reader Comments (10)

Why do I have the feeling that this game will be another FUNCOM unplayable mess with great potential, that will see excellent launch numbers only to have 80% of the player base leave after the first month, followed by the exit of several key development members?

Funcom turns out good games, for the most part. I think Anarchy Online *was* good, despite a very rocky launch and first year. Conan is quite good now, and a very refreshing system compared to WoW or RoM, but also had a difficult launch and at best a middling first year.

The launches for Longest Journey and Dreamfall went fine, and those were great games, though admittedly they don't need a server architecture backing them up.

Secret World is based on the same engine as AoC. Funcom has a lot more experience with running that under load now than it did when AoC launched. Funcom has a good rep for game quality (at least after year one), just not launches. I'm hopeful that this one is less rushed (it's been in development for the better part of a decade now) and that their experiences in both AO and AoC will lead to a smoother, more polished launch.

At the same time, it's a bit unfair...it is almost never economically viable to have the physical infrastructure to smoothly accommodate the vast hordes that will try to play on launch day, when you know that you'll never have that many simultaneous logins again. Even the behemoths out there like WoW get quite unstable and/or have long queues on big patch or expansion days.

Based on what? Seriously, people should get over the AoC launch from years ago and get over their grudge against Funcom, as AoC is a very good game now which is to their credit. This has nothing to do with AoC and is made by a different team. Keep your mind open and judge it for yourself.

Hopefully they can stay true to their ambitious vision and don't get homogenized and rushed by micromanaging publishers and financial folks.

Seems like these developers always start with these great ideas and then a few meetings later they're cloning WoW in order to keep their project funded.

Right now, the Secret World system looks much closer to GW than to WoW. You choose a limited set of skills from your total library and work with those until you change them up again.

Even if it were to magically transform itself into WoW, it would still be in a unique (for current MMOs....hopefully we'll get that World of Darkness one sometime before 2020) setting.

Rushed? Are you serious? This game has been in the wings for years already.. It is not even confirmed to be heading to closed beta any time soon, probably not until mid/late 2011 earliest. The Funcom argument is losing steam as well with AoC turning itself around quite nicely, even though I do not play it, I would if LoTRO wasnt my go to game already. I am intrigued by this game, but not sure if I will play it since the field will be a bit more crowded by that time..

"Rushed? Are you serious? This game has been in the wings for years already."

Actually, that is exactly my concern. At some point the money folks start to get nervous and start demanding to see a return on their investment by a specific date.

I would love to think that Funcom has enough experience at this to not make the same mistake but who knows if even THEY are in charge when it comes to financial stuff.

That could very well be what happened with Conan. Funcom knew it wasn't ready but had to start collecting subscriptions, knowing they could eventually fix things.

I know it's all speculation I just worry about games that I am eager to play. I hope these guys get to stick to their guns and tell their investors "THIS is the game we want to make and we're not releasing it until it's done!"

... and then the investors say, "That's great, you've got $1m more dollars to do that with."

By now, Funcom should have some sort of MMO planning and development experience so that they don't overshoot their planned budgets, but titles like TSW that drag on for years (and started development under a different name) eat up a lot of cash.

It's easy to paint the investors as the bad guys, but the devs actually need to deliver things on budget too.

I'm looking forward to TSW, but the longer it drags on the more questions start to hover over it.

I am very much looking forward to this game. I hope they take as long as they need to make it as although I want to start playing asap, I have been excited before only to be disappointed with a rushed product so am learning to be patient. The bulk of the game mechanics are probably done but I am hoping they are just adding loads of content - theres nothing worse then a launch without content!

If they take an extra year or two to develope it and add the content it needs and it still turns out to be poor, they have no one to blame except themselves!

I love the premise if this game, but have no faith in Failcom to deliver. I might consider it when, a year after launch and the game is leaking subs like a sieve, they finally start listening to the playerbase and trying to implement what WE want.

Sorry to you FC defenders out there, but my experience with AoC left a very bad taste in my mouth. I am a huge MMO and Conan fan. AoC was THE game I was looking forward to with a host of features a more mature gamer could appreciate (and no I'm not talking tits here).
I bought a new PC to handle the insane graphics and to utilize the much touted DX10, I installed Vista, the only OS offering it at the time. That's right: FC got to buy Vista. I should be able to sue them for that alone imo.

I see all the recent press AoC has been getting (seriously Massively, how come so many AoC and STO articles? more people play original EQ ffs) but I won't be going back. Maybe if they restored my original toons (80PoM,80ToS,40ishGuardian in the 1st 3 months!) and gave me a few free weeks to use WHEN I CHOOSE I'd consider it.

Ragnar Tornquist reveals more of The Secret World

Reader Comments (10)

Posted: May 27th 2010 3:12PM Triskelion said

Posted: May 27th 2010 3:31PM Wild Colors said

Posted: May 28th 2010 6:09AM Snichy said

Posted: May 27th 2010 3:18PM Pingles said

Posted: May 27th 2010 3:34PM Wild Colors said

Posted: May 27th 2010 3:55PM DancingTaco said

Posted: May 27th 2010 6:26PM Pingles said

Posted: May 27th 2010 11:03PM UnSub said

Posted: May 28th 2010 6:14AM Snichy said

Posted: May 28th 2010 8:49AM Dogorox said

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The Secret World launch delayed to July 3rd

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