As the corpses of Asheron's Call 2, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa and others will attest, it's tough to get an MMO up and running. Now, it seems that upcoming challenger The Secret World will have a little more muscle behind it as EA revealed today it will co-publish the game with Funcom.

EA's involvement is no doubt encouraging for those following the project, though it's not necessarily a guarantee of success. Over the past decade, the publisher has been involved in plenty of MMO projects that quickly withered and died, including The Sims Online, Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond and Hellgate: London -- if you want to count that. one (We do.)

That said, we're rooting for The Secret World, if only so we never have to go through this sort of heartbreak again.