You can't have a game about secrets without secret societies and The Secret World will have them in spades. Our presentation concentrated on the back stories behind three of these groups (there are more but Funcom isn't talking about them yet). One is called The Templar. Based in London, they are in many ways based on the very real Knights Templar who fought during the Crusades but were then disbanded by the Pope. The new Templar still have some of their old ways about them but are mostly new and young

Yet another group is The Illuminati who technically are also supposed to fight evil but are also the enemies of The Templar. They are based in a warehouse in New Your City.and unlike the Templar who believe in honor and duty, the Illuminati are all about grabbing and holding onto power.

Finally there's the Dragon. Based in in a temple in Korea they obviously have an Asian look and feel to them. The Dragon believes in chaos and trying to pit other secret societies against each other. In many ways they could the the most secret of the organizations.
Players will pick from one of these societies to join in The Secret World. Your starting point for missions will usually be your societies home base. You can also form player groups that Funcom is calling Cabals in The Secret World and gain access to more skills and items as you go up in your society's ranks. There will even be leaderboards that you will be able to share with your friends outside the game in social networking programs like Facebook

While fighting the mysterious forces of evil in the real world might be enough for anyone there will also be ways to fight other players? You betcha. In The Secret World's case PvP play takes under the Earth. The whole "hollow Earth" myth is a reality in this game and you will battle other players under the planet to control the substance known as anima. Funcom is also hinting that PvP play will be helpful in the game's PvE play as well.

The end of our meeting had one of those "one more thing" surprises that Steve Jobs likes to spring at Apple press conferences. In this case it was real gameplay footage from The Secret World (not the CGI trailers that we have seen previously). The footage was heavily action based with players fighting some of the oddest looking creatures we have ever seen in an MMO game (and you can get a glimpse at what we saw in the game's first official screenshots in our gallery)

While Funcom is just beginning to reveal what they have planned for their next big MMO project, it's pretty clear from our press demonstration last week that The Secret World will be unlike any game made for the genre. It's not exactly fantasy, it's not really horror and it's not going to be a shooter per se. It's . . . well, it looks like an amalgam of several genres that we hope Funcom can put together in a cohesive whole. If they can, The Secret World will be a game that many will want to know more about.

Check out all of The Secret World downloads at Big Download