IGN is the latest site to show up with a preview for The Secret World. In their preview they confirm that there are other videos which have not been seen by the public yet. There is a longer version of the HD trailer that was released today, which we will have to wait to see.

“The gist of the videos goes something like this: a normal human in the real world is going about everyday tasks when they suddenly encounter something completely supernatural or paranormal. Then the gloves come off. This is a game that’s going to be centered heavily on combat. It’s also interesting because it’s an MMO that will not have rigid classes or even experience levels. Instead, you can amass different abilities into you character and, if you want, you can respec your character at any time. Instead of creating a new character from scratch, just take your existing character and modify abilities as needed.”

Here’s another little bit on budget and voice actors:

“This is also a big budget project. Ragnar said that the game currently has a voice cast of more than 100 actors, and that they’ve recorded in cities around the globe, including New York and London. This sounds similar to Funcom’s adventure game Dreamfall, which had a stellar voice cast that was also assembled from around the globe.”

Gamasutra has an interesting interview up with Aleksander Grondal, producer of the upcoming Battlefield Heroes, a free to play entry in the Battlefield (FPS) series. They were inspired by Korea’s free-to-play MMO model, but how do you make Battlefield free? They intend to run ads on the website and in the game design, such as the loading screens, but not in the actual game itself. You’ll also be able to do microtransactions for real currency.

Aleksander’s own development background includes working at Funcom on Anarchy Online and Dreamfall.

“I think I’ve brought something new into DICE, because they have been all about shooters, and we’re adding a sort of MMO approach. I think that together we make a good fit for Heroes.”