MMORPG.com and Funcom have teamed up to bring our readers the first view of The Secret World Game Director Joel Bylos' latest letter to the community. As he sits huddled in his bunker, Joel hopes development of TSW will continue past December 21st and he's got lots of news to share if it does! Read on and get excited! Leave us your thoughts in the comments.

One of the great strengths with The Secret World is our ambitious post-launch update plan. So far we’ve released five strong updates, called Issues, chock full of content, storylines, features and improvements. Having something new to play around with, something that keeps the game fresh and alive is important for us and we remain fully committed to releasing regular Issues. As part of the move away from required subscription, there will be some components of these issues that are free, while the other components will be paid DLC content. Though it will most likely differ from update to update, content such as new storylines and new locations will usually be part of the paid DLC.

Read more of Joel Bylos’ Game Director’s Letter.

/salute 

I SHALL JOIN YOU IN THE FIRES OF HELL, KIND SIR! GOOD DAY!

Since for me the world / the content is the core in TSW, my favourite part in the letter was:

"I think that it puts the responsibility on us to deliver high quality, consistent content that is worth paying for. ...  We've moved away from the "shotgun" approach to missions, that is, rather than spreading all of our missions across the entire game, each update will target a specific storyline.

This means that we can create long and compelling experiences that are diverse and offer something different every month."

I can't wait the upcoming Issues :)

The Secret World has HANDS DOWN the best writing and quest design of ANY MMORPG I've ever played. Hands down - no competition.

The quests are well written, voice acted and so many of them are SO creative!

The atmosphere of the game is amazing - the sounds, the artistic style, etc.

The Combat is pretty MEH to be honest - it's not something I consider very fun (using Shotgun/Hammer combo atm... perhaps another combo would be more fun.)

Overall, I'd strongly recommend this MMORPG to anyone who doesn't mind excercising their mind - anyone who wants to do more than mindlessly drool and grind.

Will see you in the Fifth Age, Joel.  We, of the Dragon, do NOT intend to let the world end.  We will maintain balance until the end...

I remember when I started the game back on release, liked it within the first couple of hours. After 10 hours I was in love with it.

When I played this one mission, where I found a crashed car, got to listen to the navigation device voice of the route the car took and had to backtrack that route by looking at the map to find out from which address the car departed to reach the next tier I yelled "Awesome!!" at the screen several times. In TSW one can find the finest mission design ever done in the MMO genre. This level of quality content, I hope they are able to keep up

Originally posted by SwobyJ
Oh and about combat - at least for most players, the inital solo stuff just doesn't make full use of the system. Once into dungeons and later content, many (but not all) players get into experimenting, making full hybrid builds, and making what's fun for them, instead of just a x+y weapon combo with the basic builders and finishers. Your feeling might not change, but for some others it at least did.

Yep, it pays to sit down a bit with the ability wheel to understand how it works -- some very nice builds to be had with some experimentation and study.  Here's a really good primer:

http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com/guides:build-mechanics

I just started playing TSW, having alot of fun with it. I had avoided it because I was already into several other mmos and it got some bad feedback from clanmates who played it on launch. Playing now there is alot of great things in it I like. I am sick to death of fantasy games and have been slowly trying to stop playing them completely(still play gw2/wow/darkfall a bit). TSW is a great blend of paranormal/sci-fi/conspiracy stuff.  From the few missions I have completed I think they actually made a game with difficult and clever puzzles.

Buy to play is really awesome and well done, so far as good or better than what is in GW2 and better than all the F2P crap I have seen over the past few years. This is a game I will not mind investing some cash into for vanity/dlc content when the time comes, somethin Ive only done for GW2 bag slots.

End of days ARG is pretty sweet too, alot harder than I expected :P