The Secret World Message Board older than one year ago

Last week I got to see Funcom’s supernatural conspiracy MMO The Secret World in action, and I went from being interested to being excited. For an MMO to be set in a modern-world scenario is intriguing enough, but some of the elements that Funcom showed off demonstrated genuine ambition. They want to do story, and they want to do bold new game ideas. The most interesting of these are the “investigation” quests. A few words on those, and other interesting things, below. (more…)

Independent developer Funcom has joined up with EA's EA Partners division in order to co-publish the upcoming present-day paranormal MMO The Secret World. More »

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 Funcom's upcoming challenger, The Secret World, will have a little more muscle behind it as EA revealed today it will co-publish the game.

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 had a hand 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.

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.

Funcom's MMO gets big backing.

#holidaycards Christmas in Funcom's upcoming paranormoal MMO The Secret World is just as festive and terrifying as it is in the real world. More »

Funcom has offered up the biggest peek yet into The Secret World with the latest trailer. Check it out for lots of gameplay footage, behind-the-scenes commentary and a look at the Templar faction's starting hub, London. As a bonus, you'll also learn how swallowing flies can give you magical powers.

Five new screens from Funcom's The Secret World

#funcom Funcom has released a new trailer and screens showing players what it's like to become a Templar, one of the three factions in the upcoming real-world supernatural massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Secret World. More »

Home of the Templars.

#religionweek Where once they shuffled, now they run. Initially born of forbidden voodoo rituals or the sign of a religious apocalypse, for the past decade zombies have slowly metamorphosed into the by-products of something else entirely. More »

Funcom has released a new gameplay trailer for The Secret World. The trailer shows off some of the many enemies players will face -- including giant crab monsters, zombies and a squid ... thing -- as well as some of the characters they will meet. As we noted in our impressions of the game earlier this week, The Secret World sets itself apart from most MMOs, using real-world settings and characters. Strange as it seems, even with all this new gameplay footage and information, we still don't know an awful lot about what's actually going on in the game. The only hint we have from the trailer is a reference to "something from the bottomless deep rising to devour us all."

Whatever is happening, at least there are plenty of monsters to kill, right?

#clips Funcom promised something big related to The Secret World was coming today, and they've delivered, with the first in-game trailer for the upcoming modern day occult MMO. More »

During GDC, I saw Ragnar Tornquist demonstrate his upcoming Funcom MMO, The Secret World. I should note that I'm not well versed in MMOs, and my experience doesn't extend far beyond a scant few hours with the trial version of World of Warcraft (and many, many hours with Phantasy Star Online and Diablo II, if you count those). As such, I had my doubts about being the best candidate to catch an early glimpse of Funcom's latest project.

After seeing the game in action and learning more about its direction, however, I started to think otherwise. As someone who typically avoids MMOs, it's interesting to see one that abandons the traditional fantasy and sci-fi trappings of the genre. As a gamer accustomed to lavish, story-driven console games, it's wonderful to see an MMO focusing on narrative (with fully voiced cutscenes, no less). No leveling, no specific character classes -- no Orcs? In short, what really struck me about The Secret World is how different it is.

#thesecretworld The end time, a doomsday described in many different religions, isn't a subject typically explored by massively multiplayer online games, which is a bit surprising. More »

It's becoming less and less secret by the day!

In an interview with IGN, Funcom's Ragnar Tornquist has shed some light on the perpetually foggy MMO, The Secret World. The interview focuses on several facets of the game, including its realistic settings, enemy design and how The Secret World compares to Funcom's most recent MMO, Age of Conan.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the discussion is just how much content the company has planned for The Secret World; we believe the scientific term is "quite a bit." According to Tornquist, the team has planned "several years' worth" of content for the game. "It'll take us years and years to reveal everything about our game world," said Tornquist, "which is a good thing, because it's an MMO." He added that Funcom expects that game to last for "a very, very long time." Like, as long as the government has kept the fake moon landing covered up?

[Via Massively]

Concept art from Funcom's upcoming MMO.

Loads of info about Funcom's mysterious MMO.

The Secret World monster blog found.

Mysterious in-game footage reveals a glimpse into horrific fate of Kingsmouth.

Thanks to the video above, we now know more about Funcom's upcoming MMO The Secret World than ever before. And yet, that's still not saying much. The new trailer provides the first in-game footage, specifically showing off the town of Kingsmouth, a game location revealed last month. Of course, no sleepy New England town is complete without a dark secret, and Kingsmouth is no exception. It seems an evil fog rolled into town one day, taking most of the townsfolk with it, leaving only a handful of unlucky survivors and ... zombies. They aren't your typical, garden variety zombies, though. No, these zombies never die, as the narrator explains, "Kill one, he'll rise in the morning. There's no getting rid of them." There's no telling if the actual game will hold up at this point, but the premise thus far is certainly intriguing.

Since it was first revealed back in 2007, there really hasn't been a lot of information released about Funcom's upcoming MMO The Secret World. We've learned a bit about its factions, enjoyed a handful of screenshots and watched a couple of nifty trailers (embedded after the break, for your convenience). Now, Funcom has opened a website for one of the game's locations, a sleepy New England town (yes, another one) by the name of Kingsmouth. The website is designed as though it were made by an actual chamber of commerce, including plenty of low resolution photos and awkwardly placed Google ads. According to Joystiq's sister site Massively, the site is also full of references to H.P. Lovecraft, which seems appropriate given the otherworldly nature of the game. There is what appears to be a handful of screenshots in the site's gallery section, and the news section also mentions planning for "Kingsmouth Day 2010," which is set to go down on Saturday, April 3. Whether or not anything will actually happen on that day is anyone's guess. Gallery: The Secret World (screenshots)

What to do when you're coming off a year of huge losses but still planning to reinvigorate the company? Get yourself a new CEO! That's what Age of Conan's Funcom did, announcing that Miguel Caron would be stepping into the position at Funcom Games Canada. Caron has been working in Quebec with Lyrtech, an audio and video processing company, as well as with IT firms like BCM International and NoWire Telecom. Given his background in reducing IT costs and raising market share in the realm of digital communications, we'd guess he's got his job cut out for him at Funcom. The company says it's aiming to expand operations in Montreal, far away from its humble roots in Norway, so we'll see if Caron can summon some Cimmerian strength and get things moving in the right direction over there. [Via Massively]

This is one damsel you don't want to distress.