One game that I've been excited about for quite some time is Funcom's "The Secret World." There is not a lot of information out there about it yet, but what is out there is awesome. And what Funcom has done with complex ARGs for the game has just been ... awesome. But now GDC is on, and according to a couple of posts (one and two) we can expect some concrete info soon!

What we do know is that the game will be set in the present day, in our world. The locations will be based on real locations in our world. The premise is that all/most of the legends, conspiracy theories, and so on are true - and you're a member of a secret society vying for control. The character development system will be skill-based rather than level based. And that's pretty much it. But that's enough!

Playing Anarchy Online again, Funcom's first MMO, I have been reminded again how awesome a more open, skill-based character system is. AO's character dev is complex, as I mentioned in my wall-o-text AO post. Hopefully TSW's will be even deeper.

I'm hoping to get involved in early beta for TSW. I'm playing AO, EQ2, and STO, sure, but I really miss the beta process. The last major beta (Alpha, actually) I was involved with was LOTRO and that was years ago. I miss the process of seeing a game evolve through early alpha, to beta, then open beta and finally release. Ah well, soon hopefully. I had a chance back in October/November to get a guaranteed slot in the TSW beta, by buying a 1 year subscription to AoC but I wasn't able to take advantage at the time. Hopefully I'll win the random selection lottery again like I seem to so regularly. ;) I know a lot of times active posters at fan sites/etc get selected early on, but honestly, I never found a point in posting a ton about a game that nothing is known about and I'm not in testing for. Once I'm "in", my post count usually goes to 1,000 rather quickly. Heh. Just no point in idle speculation, in my opinion. We don't even know... anything, so there's nothing really to talk about.

Anyway... TSW... A title to watch!