I like the look of The Secret World which is on top of my "to watch" list. But there are a few important things that will decide if this is something for me and some worrying things. In random order:

• SWToR claimed everyone is a hero. When everyone is a hero then none can be a hero. To be special there need to be many different sorts of player characters with vastly differing interests and agendas. I hope TSW can live up to that.
• There has to be a player driven economy and deep crafting incl. player built structures and items. Preferably private housing exterior of faction headquarters and guild headquarters.
• In line with the everyone is NOT a hero comment there need to be player political professions and progressions and other stuff outside of just levelling combat characters
• A Secret World is only secret, monstrous, scary and convey a sense of horror through breaking these secret happenings across a world of the mediocre. There need to be normal zones, regular people on street not knowing what goes on and a chance to blend in. I hope they will allow for that.
• There must be servers with intelligent pvp - not everyone think pvp that is limited to a large combat zone is the least bit interesting. It will be stale when kept to one - even if it is a large zone. Let there be open world engagement. The best way to handle pvp in a large open world is to introduce an incognito system, where you can go inactive from your faction and not be attacked (with the appropriate timers etc.). Look at SWG for inspiration on going "overt / covert".
• Funcom should be honest this time around; something doesn't work or won't be as announced, say it openly and honestly to the player base. Lies and deceptions as with AoC would make the player base rotten; I for one would never touch a Funcom game again if they lie and cheat again.
• No free to play model and only very limited cash shop please. If you have a cash shop with good items, then you kill crafting and the player economy and reduces play reason to being one of combat.
• The videos we see (like the recently released Blue Mountain) shows us a world where there is mystery and scary stories abound. But can this be retained in the mmo is it just a skin to go kill X number of Y monsters? We don't want a skin. Thanks.
• Include meaningful end game content and polish the game BEFORE release. The days of pay to beta should be over.
• Above all else, create a living, breathing, engaging world with multiple things to do outside combat (solve mysteries and puzzles, build political organisations, advance in your faction, build player structures, gather strange ressources, craft weapons and spells, earn a living outside of quests etc.)... Only then will TSW have something to offer that the other games don't.

I also have some concerns after doing some initial research into the game. But again I think just keeping it on the "watch" list, not sure if I will pre-order any more MMOs for a while now... /jaded

A very good OP, even if I don't agree completely with everything being asked for.

I think the most important thing you brought up is honesty. AoC promised a lot but didn't really deliver as they hyped. To me it looks like they are doing it the other way round this time. They haven't talked about crafting yet, not because it's something that is going to be tacked on at the end, but because it isn't final yet. The same goes for combat and how the skills work. I don't think they want to present anything that won't be in the finished game.

I believe from what Funcom has said that crafting is going to be important to the game and a integrated part of the experience. At the same time they have currently no plans to have player housing at launch. They could have added it quite easily, but they don't want to add a checkbox-feature and haven't found a way to integrate it into the game yet.

Regarding the "everyone is a hero", I think TSW takes another approach, you are part of an organisation and (Dragon, Templar, Illuminati) and a big part of the experience is growing to be somebody in that organisation. I think this will be tied quite closely to the questing, but I think we will have to wait and see for the implementation.

Regarding PvP, there won't be world-pvp. There will be specific areas where it's possible to PvP. This ties quite closely into the setting and also avoids ganking etc. At the same time, there is a warzone with a 100v100v100 battle with multiple locations of interest, and it's persistent.

Regarding the questing, some of my friends just got into the beta and they are absolutely loving the questing. According to one of them, Ragnar Tørnquist is a genius. That comment came after solving one of the puzzle quests. Much of the game IS endgame, due to how the power curve works out.

Regarding polish, the above mentioned friends, had the following comment: no lag, no disconnects, no crashes, no quest bugs, awesome graphics on a 3 year old machine (only added a radeon 6950), running everything on max.

You should head over to the TSW forums, there you shall be enlightened slightly more.