Faction choice in The Secret World is permanent
Funcom has warned that your choice of faction in The Secret World - locked down in pre-beta ARG The Secret War - is a weightier decision than just picking a colour.
"The factions, of course, is a huge part of the game and we want players to be as invested in their secret society as possible, before they even start playing the game," creative director Ragnar Tørnquist told Ausgamers at gamescom.
"And that choice at the beginning of the game is final. When you’ve chosen to be a Templar, Illuminati or Dragon, that’s it - you’re that for life.
"They’re interesting things, because first off, there are missions that will allow you to gain rank within your secret society and to do that of course, you have to interact with the other factions. Because the Templars will want to send someone to infiltrate the Illuminati to get their secrets; they want to sabotage some of their installations; they want to hack into their computers."
Tørnquist said the gamescom demo was a good example - Illuminati players will notice a Templar agent in the distance, but on their own playthrough, Templar players will be that distant figure rather than following the same path.
In other The Secret World news, Tørnquist said the team is considering installing Pacific servers.
"We have an Australian on the team and he’s got to fight hard for this. We definitely want to support our Australian gamers. I can’t answer a lot about like server locations and stuff like that, but it’s really important for us that this game is a global game, and that access to the game is as convenient for everybody as possible," he said.
"It’s a huge region that really is crying out for a lot more local servers. I mean there are a lot of gamers in both Australia and New Zealand of course; Singapore and Philippines and those areas as well that really want to play on servers that are a bit closer to home than North America or Europe. So, that’s something that we’re definitely going to be talking about and looking more into."
Click through to the full interview for more details on the game's "horizontal" skill-based progression and how players grow more powerful over time.
Funcom is yet to nominate a release date for The Secret World, although a pre-beta social game is expected to kick off soon.