The Secret World to feature London as Templar's base

News about The Secret World has been appropriately scant in the past few months, until GamesCom this week where the information bombshells have been falling. The Secret World's Ragnar Tournquist gave IGN a secret tour of one of the games explorable areas: London.

The highlights:

1. London joins New York and Seoul, South Korea as one of many explorable real-world locations in the game.

2. London is the home base of the Templar faction, but also serves as the game's social hub area. Of course, some places in London are Templar-only. The Illuminati is based out of New York and Dragon resides in Seoul.

3. Tournquist describes The Secret World as having dark, secret, "forgotten streets" where the veil between our world and the next are thinner, and where sometimes bad things from the next world get through. Awesomely creepy... yes.

4. London is the biggest area in the game and its social center, a pub called The Horned God, allows players to interact in a variety of ways. There's a fight club, a performance stage where fellow players will either cheer or boo you off stage and a dance floor. Even secret societies can't stay off the floor when "Poker Face" is playing.

5. The Templar character creation screen is set in the back of a Haitian restaurant. At the beginning of the game you're met by Mama Abena, a character who is familiar with, but not necessarily friendly with, the Templar secret society.

6. In order to keep people from discovering the Templar's secrets, the portions of London you'll be exploring are off limits for regular people under the guise of a terrorist threat. Tournquist also hints at the origins of the city of London are much earlier than we know and beneath the streets lies a world that hasn't changed for a thousand years.

7. Luella, a character you'll meet in The Horned God, wears fake fairy wings to show off her true fairy heritage.

8. Items for sale in The Secret World are different than most MMOs too. How do pet imps and living tattoos sound?

All in all, this game keeps sounding better and better. We can't wait to explore London's darkest streets when it releases (hopefully) in 2011.