More New Content for The Secret World Coming

A couple of news items from Funcom and The Secret World in the past few weeks.

  1. Layoffs!!! Mentioned at the last stock meeting, Funcom announced that The Secret World did not meet expected sales numbers. This has prompted a series of layoffs and “temporary” layoffs as the company positions itself for current and future projects. Hopefully those “temporary” layoffs will not last too long and the developers can get back to work on TSW soon.
  2. Issue #2 of the monthly updates has been announced. This update, called Digging Deeper, is said to include new missions just as the previous issue #1 did. In addition, there is a barber shop for hair and makeup changes and a plastic surgeon for a more extensive “nip and tuck” of your character's facial features. A new weapon, the rocket launcher, has also been revealed. It will introduce a new series of auxiliary weapons that will also get their own action bar slot. This should add some new possibilities and I can not wait to get my rocket launcher! Sadly though, we will have to wait a bit longer to get our new toy because of the layoffs – September 11th is the current target date for Issue #2 release.

I am still enjoying The Sercet World quite a bit and am surprised by the low sales marks. Many friends and guildmates that may have skipped the initial launch tried the game out on the anniversary weekend and loved it enough to sign up long term. I really think if Funcom can keep up with monthly or semi-monthly updates, this game can have a long life. While they tend to blame distorted review numbers in Metacritic for the low sales, I think that as word of mouth spreads, more and more people will jump in and see what a unique and enjoyable game this is.