The Secret World

Imagine if every myth, conspiracy theory and urban legend was true. Imagine if your worst nightmare came to life. Imagine a world where vampires hunt for mortal blood in dingy London nightclubs, where werewolves lurk in the sewers beneath Seoul, and where the undead prey on the living in the shadows of New York City. This is the premise for «The Secret World», Funcom's upcoming massively multiplayer online game set in the modern day real world.

•Urban environments - Throw yourself into the bustling urban environments of New York, London and Seoul. Shop for clothes, weapons and accessories. Stop by the local nightclub to socialize with your friends before heading out into the darkness that is slowly encroaching on the city streets.

•Real-world locations - Discover real-world locations throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and America. From New England to Egypt, explore vast lands full of detail and story as you unravel the myths, legends and conspiracies of the world through a unique, story-driven gameplay experience.

•Freeform gameplay - Experience a game that has no classes or levels. Truly freeform character customization allows you to create the alter-ego you want to play, and gameplay that goes beyond the usually rigid MMO structure allows you to play the game the way you want to play it.

•Hundreds of powers - Wield fiery katana, gold-plated pistols, and deadly automatic rifles. Learn martial arts, black magic and voodoo. Choose from hundreds of powers to create a character completely customized to your liking.

•Action-packed combat - Lose yourself in the most intense real-time action-packed combat system ever. Aim, strafe, shoot – movement is key as bullets fly past you and explosions threaten to tear you apart. Swords or firearms, magic and melee, each offering a similarly intense, reactive combat experience.

•Secret societies - Join the Illuminati, the Templars or the Dragon - the three secret societies that pull the strings of our world. Work your way to the top, earn titles and rewards, and play a key role in the battle for world domination.

•Player-made organisations - Create or join player-made organisations called cabals. Create your own headquarters, and decorate and furnish it to your liking. All cabals are ranked against each other, and a cabal's success will bring fame, fortune and power to its members.

•Track your progress - Earn points for everything you do - from combat and exploration, to trade skills and PvP - in order to rank high on both local and global scoreboards, gain titles and worldwide acclaim, and help make your secret society the most powerful and influential of them all.

•Intense player vs. player combat - Take part in ferocious, non-stop player vs. player action in the Battle for Hollow Earth. Fight to control anima, a priceless resource deep within the bowels of our world that will bring unprecedented power to whichever cabal that collects it

•Next-generation graphics - Featuring the latest in cutting-edge graphics technology, explore beautifully realized real-world locations that will truly set the standard for next-generation massively multiplayer online games. Prepare for an audiovisual experience unlike anything seen before.

I think MMos are beautiful and I completely understand the appeal of MMOs. However, I have never been able to fully immerse myself into an MMO no matter how hard I have tried. I think the number 1 reason for this is when I have time for an electronic game, I play them in order to escape people. I do not want anyone in the room when I play an electronic game and it is very rare I will play an electronic game with someone else. When I sit down in front of my PC or console to play a game, it is after a long day dealing with hundreds of people. The last thing I want to do is interact with more people. I want to avoid any and all such interaction. I want to withdraw completely into my own world. Finally there is an MMO that completely fulfills that need while still allowing me to build my character and have a chance to rank in some aspect of the game play, The Secret World.

The Secret World uses no classes or levels, thus giving the player complete freedom of choice when creating and developing his or her alter-ego. This complete freedom of play plus the use of subject matter that I have studied for most of my life, gives me much excitement for the release of this game, nevermind an opportunity to participate in the beta. Due to the fact I am not one for MMOs and this game incorporating material that I am highly familiar due to a number of reasons and therefor they better get it right, makes me a very hard sell. And I am sold.
The Secret World takes inspiration from a lot of different sources: mythology, pop cutlure, urban legend and consiracy theories. This game mashes them all together into a unique setting which makes up part of the “secret world”. Within this Secret World is the concept that there are 3 secret societies: The Illuminati, The Templars and The Dragons. They compete for resources and territories, and world dominations while hunting down and destroying zombies, vampires, demons and all other types of evil and nefarious creatures. Even so everyone who plays the game will be fighting and united against evil, where the PVP aspect comes in is that the 3 societies are competing for power and dominance against each other as they are fight for the same cause.

The developers took their time researching the material and presenting it in a fashion that will appeal to those who love a good conspiracy theory and have been brought up with a Western view on the Occult, those who may think conspiracy theories are silly and/or may have an open European view of the Occult, and those who just don’t care about any of those things but want to fight vampires, zombies, demons and other such creatures while being a character type made popular once more thanks to such stories as “The DaVinci Code” and “Angels and Demons”. And if you are not like me and enjoy participating in a guild and interacting with fellow players online, of course you the option to play and interact with your fellow “cabal” members.
When you start the game, you choose a secret society. The city you begin in and where your home base is depends on which society you join. When you start the game, you are initiated into that society at the lowest rank. Based on what you do in the game as an individual, you will move up the ranks of the society. On top of individual movement up the ranks, you can create Cabals. All Cabal members must be of the same society. Cabals will also be ranked within each society based on actions of the game play within a Cabal and between opposing Cabals. Cabals will have individual housing which can furnish to their liking. The higher the Cabal ranking, the more stuff you can unlock to upgrade your Cabal’s housing.

Interaction between Cabals depends on what society you chose to be a member of. Everything a player and their Cabal does in the game, each action an individual and Cabal makes will be tracked and everybody will be ranked. These rankings will be displayed on a global ranking board. Rankings will track almost everything: how many people a player has killed, how many vampires etc a player as killed, how many items a player has created, how much of the world has been explored, who is the best PVPer in a country, who has the best Cabal within a society and within a country, etc. Players of the game and outsiders of the game (through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter), will be able to view these ranks. The developers want to give extra incentive for people to participate by making the ranking as open as possibile and the variety of ways to rank as varied as possible.

There are two “earths” to play. The developers of The Secret World wanted there to be two very seperate and distinct types of game play. They wanted to create persistant PVP gameplay and thus the battle for hallow earth was born. Underground or hallow earth is a giant hive that consists of many cells. Each Cabal or player battle one another to gain control of these cells and spread which causes the Cabal to increase in power and rank. Only some of these cells will provide beneficial effects to the whole of the secret society a player belongs to.

They also wanted to give players a persistant PVE gameplay option. The PVE play takes place on the surface of the earth. These distinctive “earths” creates a game within a game. Because of the game within a game aspect, even if you only particpate in the PVE aspect on the surface and only care to be the highest ranked zombie killer in Canada, you’ll notice when something substantial happens underground. There will be changes on the surface even if subtle. The developers wanted to make it visible that something is affecting the gameplay without the player feeling obligated to have to play both PVE and PVP aspects of the game.

The game is not just about shooting zombies in the head, slaying vampires or ridding the world of demons in a quest to eradicate evil but also a power struggle among the 3 secret societies that affect this quest. Each individual and each Cabal play a part in the whole. This is very illustrative of some common consiparcy theories in the West of deep “undergrond” organazations or reptile people in disguise affecting change we barely notice in our “surface” lives.