Editor-in-Chief Chris "Pwyff" Tom sat down with The Secret World's Joel Bylos and Martin Bruusgaard to talk about TSW's unique idea of endgame content and how they see players progressing in this massive world.

ZAM: You were saying that once you hit a balancing point, that's where the builds really matter. But there are also people who complete one build, and they end up calling it a day. Will there be room for these players?

Martin: Take the heroics, for instance. Let's say you're the Shotgun guy, even if it's not optimal in all situations. You won't be kicked from the group as long the group, in total, brings what's needed. So for players who want to focus on that one role, they will be able to keep up because they can do that, and others can just build themselves accordingly. There are people who love being that Swiss Army Knife of a player. Having the whole power wheel unlocked, that sort of thing.

ZAM: Was there anything in this hands-on that we haven't seen at all, but you're really eager for players to get into?

Joel: Lore, achievements, crafting -

ZAM: The Warzones.

Joel: All the persistent PvP.

Martin: Oh, and the outer wheel. That's where the bulk of the powers are.

ZAM: I was going to ask about that! We never got to see any descriptions, but do you think you could clarify what the outer wheel will offer? You said 7 cells to specialize per weapon, so that means there are 49 extra skills that we didn't see.

Martin: In a wheel, there are two cells per weapon type. Those two cells reflect what the weapon has to offer in terms of effects. So if you were playing Shotguns, those specialize in cone attacks, blasts and snares. If you go into Blades, you'll see that they have a lot of point-blank AoE abilities and stuns. So the two first cells of the inner wheel are made to be a decent build. It's your overall bread-and-butter, cookie cutter kind of build. But once you get a taste of that, you can look to the outer wheel for more specific powers with those kinds of effects that you saw in the inner wheel.

ZAM: So you could have five different AoE cone attacks from your Shotguns.

Martin: Yes, but those cone attacks are also in different flavors in order to create different synergies for whatever else you want to combine those cone attacks with. The easiest way to say it is that you'll find more "glue" in the outer wheel, if that makes sense.

ZAM: So if you have a very specific build in mind, those are the building blocks to work from.

Martin: You'll also find the "elites." There were no elites on the inner wheel, but Elites are just kick-ass. You can only have one active Elite and one passive Elite, and those are really build-defining.

Also, every weapon has two roles. One role is always DPS, so you can always deal damage with one weapon, while the other role is for other things, like tanking, utility, support, healing, crowd control. Secondary roles.

ZAM: There have been MMORPGs, specifically Superhero MMORPGs, that focus on costume customization while keeping stats completely separate. So let's say someone finds a cool hat in the beginning of the game, but they never find a cooler hat all the way through. Do you think a system where some players may never change their clothes is a problem for you? Do you think it will inhibit a player's desire to grow, once the aesthetic choice has been separated?

Joel: As an aside, if you complete the dungeons, like The Polaris today, you might get a t-shirt that says "I defeated the Ur-Draug, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt." So imagine you can only get that for doing that dungeon, that achievement. You basically become a walking achievement rack. In addition to that, there's so much space we're giving people for clothing. You can store over a thousand pieces of clothing in your wardrobe. So you can create outfits that people can switch out at will.

To address the issue of "how do we make people want the uber items," well, especially in the MMO space, people are digging that stuff out the database and putting it on websites anyway. So if I want the best item for my character, I don't go looking for another player to find it; I go search for it on a website.

ZAM: Quick question then, how many pieces of clothing do you have planned for launch? Maybe you don't have this locked down, but ballpark me.

Martin: Hmm…

ZAM: Do you want to put it in the thousands?

Martin: Yes.

ZAM: … Really?

Joel: Every NPC you saw in the game is wearing clothing that players can get; except maybe the Police Officers.

Martin: I think there are 11 slots of clothing. It's very specific. There's a belt, and an undershirt, and so on. It's funny because whenever we're making pre-made characters, the girls have a great time setting those characters up.

ZAM: All right, I think I'm holding someone else's interview hostage here, so thanks so much for answering my questions!

Joel: Thank you as well.

Martin: It was a pleasure!

After the interview, I realized that, in spite of our lengthy discussion where I accidentally bit into the next journalist's interview time (sorry!), there were even more questions that I wanted to ask. As a journalist, some of the big design choices that went into TSW are ambtious - impressively so! - due in part to Funcom's inescapable past. Of course, I would forget to really get into this line of questioning in my interview, but I decided to pester the team after to at least graze the topics. Read on for those answers from TSW's Joel Bylos!

ZAM: You've explicitly stated that some quests and quest-lines will require Googling or hooking up with study groups to figure out key riddles. This is a big difference from other MMOs that either blissfully ignore the huge community of online leveling guides and databases (like us), or the ones that try to make their quests so easy to track and follow that outside reference isn't needed. What thoughts informed the decision to make these intellectually dense quests, and do you have any other thoughts on designing an MMO that wants players to Google difficult questions?

Joel From my perspective at least, games as a medium have the ability to stretch beyond the realm of simple entertainment. The best books/movies/music challenge the consumer to reflect on, not just themselves, but also on ideologies and events in the real world.

Games are a maturing medium and part of that maturity is attempting to do this as well. Some of the greatest games in the world already do this (Planescape Torment - What can change the nature of a man?) but there is plenty of room for us (developers) to do more.

So investigation missions, at the most shallow level, are puzzles for people to solve. They ask people to do a bit of research and maybe learn a thing or two about different things - morse code, encryption techniques, historical fact, etc.

But on a more meaningful level, they are also asking players to draw direct comparisons between the world of the game and the real world. Blur the lines, because then the game stories can hold up a mirror to the real world and get people asking questions as well.

ZAM: Some of the team came from Age of Conan and are now working on The Secret World; were there any major lessons learned from Age of Conan that really helped inform the making of The Secret World?

Joel: There is a long catalogue of lessons learned but perhaps the ones that are most relevant to people who are "gun-shy" after AoC:

• We try to maintain the consistency of content across the entire spectrum of the game, rather than the uneven polish that Conan launched with.
• We have a much more mature engine, which was responsible for many of the complaints in AoC. We have years of bugfixes done on the game engine.

Shameless plug: I'd also like to encourage anyone who has doubts about Funcom to revisit Age of Conan. The game is free now, and I think just playing it demonstrates the commitment that we as a company make to titles we release. We are not "fire and forget" developers, we care about the worlds we create and we strive to continually improve upon them. 

ZAM: During our hands-on session, we traveled from London to Kingsmouth via the pathways in Agartha. Will there ever be an opportunity to manually travel throughout the world on foot, or via more traditional methods, like a car?

Joel: The ability to navigate from say, London to Egypt in the "overworld" will never be possible. The distances are too vast to work.

Vehicles are a definite possibility for the future - but not for launch. Driving mechanics are hard to "get right" and we'd rather not spend our focus on such a complex system before launch.

ZAM: I recall once it being mentioned that certain skills could be found and / or acquired by different means other than allocating skill points. Maybe I'm being crazy, but is this still a possibility?

Joel: Yes, there are certain faction skills that are obtained via other sources. These are non-combat skills for the most part.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Editor-in-Chief.