We caught up with The Secret World's Creative Director, Ragnar Tornquist, to see how this unique MMO is faring one month in.

ZAM: Speaking about PvP (and this isn't about the new PvP dungeon that was announced!), I was just wondering what sort of PvP balancing the team was planning to do in the coming patches. For example, for players who only like to play in the persistent warzone, Fusang Projects, getting enough Black Marks of Venice can be rather difficult, while White Marks of Venice continue to pile up in the thousands. Is this a system working as planned, or are there changes in the works?

Ragnar: There are definitely changes in the works, although exactly what the PvP team is focusing and working on, I can't reveal just yet. They are obviously deep into the game themselves, playing along with everyone else out there, and getting a feel for what works well and what doesn't work quite as well -- and we're not afraid of change, of making tweaks and adjustments where needed, rebalancing or even redesigning some mechanics. So we'll see - I know that the team has a lot of ideas, and I'm sure we'll see something concrete very soon.

ZAM: Last question on balance! The team is obviously being very careful about balancing skills, especially with players investing so much time (and AP) on their builds. That being said, there are some issues, like Chaos tanks being almost mandatory for high-end dungeon groups (as they are one of the only decks that can reliably apply Weakness: Expose (+30% damage taken by target at full stack)), that can affect build diversity. Should we expect Funcom to be quite proactive in balancing weapon skills, or do you want to continue to let the players experiment with what's best?

Ragnar: That's a good question -- and I guess the answer is a bit of both. Our designers are fans of the game, and they spend a lot of their free time playing The Secret World. They get to experience the positive and negative sides of the system and the content themselves, and they'll offer up suggestions and solutions as we go forward. We will balance things when needed, but we're also not afraid to let players figure it out for themselves -- whatever works best, really, and that's a constant process.

ZAM: Jumping forward, you have some real meaty promises that have a lot of players excited. We'll start with the monthly mission packs you have planned: the size of these packs will obviously vary from month to month, but do you have a general idea of how much content you want to push out with each pack? There are obviously a lot of veterans who have been burned by dozens of other MMOs that promised unique, creative, monthly content only to get it in small doses every half a year (and sometimes as paid expansion packs). Are you confident you can deliver?

Ragnar: Yes. We are very, very confident. We just wrapped up the work on issue #1 (Unleashed) and things are looking good. Obviously, this first issue is going to be a bit smaller than subsequent ones, due to the amount of work the team had to do leading up to - and immediately following - launch, and we'll see more content as time goes on. But yes, we're very confident that we'll be able to deliver on a monthly basis, and I'm confident that players will appreciate the amount of content and features we're able to push out regularly. We have great tools and tech, a very experienced, dedicated and hard-working team, and we have made a promise that we intend to keep.

ZAM: You mentioned new auxiliary weapons. How will these work in tandem with the nine main weapons? Will we be able to invest skills into these auxiliary weapons in single skill lines - similar to the utility abilities already present - or are they more similar to inventory item skills, like the Flamethrower we constructed in Kingsmouth?

Ragnar: I won't reveal too much about the auxiliary weapons quite yet, except to say that we're planning on releasing a new weapon every month, and that we have the first five weapons planned out. They will come in ranged, melee and magical flavors, and they won't require you to toss out any of your existing decks...but enough said about that.

ZAM: Finally, I was wondering what sort of new things you might have planned for the in-game cash shop, both in terms of building on the things already there (outfits, pets, titles, etc) and in terms of brand new things we might see being sold. Might one be able to purchase deck outfits from other factions?

Ragnar: No, we won't allow the Dragon to wear Illuminati outfits, or for the Templars to go dressing up in green and gold! But we are going to keep stocking both our item (for-cash) store and the in-game vendors with cool clothes and accessories. The item store will remain cosmetic only, of course, and most of the assets we make are earmarked for the in-game vendors and for various rewards, but we've also found that players are quite happy to pay a bit of money to get some unique and cool outfits and pets, so we're going to keep serving that segment with new stock on a regular basis.

ZAM: Whew, that was a lot of questions! We'll cut it short here so that you can continue planning your new content. We're all very excited about what The Secret World has to offer in the future, and we look forward to speaking to you again!

Ragnar: Thanks! We're very excited about what we're working on ourselves, so stay tuned - there're tons of cool content coming, on a monthly basis!

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Editor-in-Chief