Funcom is doing up another Age of Conan re-evaluation with a double experience boost throughout November. As an added bonus, if you continue subscribing after the re-evaluation then you will secure a spot in The Secret World beta test. Oh yeah, the re-evaluation is a two week freebie. w00tage! Other rewards:

• Subscribing for 1 month gives 7 days extra game time for no additional cost

• Subscribing for 3 months also guarantees a spot in open beta for The Secret World
• Subscribing for 6 months also gives a level 40 helmet with a 10% XP modifier
• Subscribing for 12 months also gives a free copy of the Rise of the Godslayer expansion

In addition, the rewards for the lower tier subscriptions are also included in the higher tier subscription, which means that you will get all these exclusive rewards if you choose to subscribe for 12 months. This is a time-limited offer only, and is also available to current players. Players who have signed up for these subscription plans in October have already secured their respective reward. The Secret World beta reward includes access to the later stages of the closed beta, and a date for access will be announced later. The free download of the expansion will become available when the expansion launches.

The GDC 2009 The Secret World trailer kicks serious butt. And I do mean SERIOUS! So if you haven’t seen it yet, stop by VE3D for a look! This should get everyone’s blood pumping for TSW pretty good.

Head over to Eurogamer.net for a look at their GDC 2009 experience with The Secret World. Over the course of three pages they bring us what they got out of the presentation. Curious about loot? Here’s a tiny snip:

It’s not going to be loot in a traditional sense, but there will be a lot of really cool items you can use to enhance your character. It’s going to be a lot about the skills you get, but it’s also going to be a lot about the weapons.

If you haven’t stopped by recently, check out Funcom’s Dark Days Are Coming site, where they have given it a bit of a redesign. You can now sign up for The Secret World mailing list, which I assume will shoot us newsletters eventually!

MMORPG.com has posted a TSW video interview with Ragnar Tørnquist, while at GDC 2009. Ragnar explains a bit about the concept of The Secret World. In Part I they talk about the setting and character development. Part II goes on to talk about similarities and differences between The Secret World and Age of Conan.

Massively features their preview of The Secret World from GDC 2009, and an interview with Funcom’s Ragnar Tørnquist. Here’s a little chunk on gameplay and travel.

I want to emphasize that this won’t be something like Grand Theft Auto with magic, with a focus on huge, huge open cities. They are reasonably small places where you will start out and take the adventure from there. But one very important thing to note is that this sounds like a very fragmented world. London, New York, Seoul, those cities are a long way away from each other. But we are creating, or at least trying to create, a pretty seamless world. This means there are ways of getting from London to New York very quickly, and we are focusing on that. You won’t be just walking up to a plane, clicking on it, and getting a red line that quickly points to where you’re going and boom, you’re there. You will be moving in real-time from London to New York, just a lot quicker.

IGN Vault did a bang-up job on their preview and interview for The Secret World, from GDC 2009. Staci Krause and Charlene Sheridan quizzed the TSW developers to score as much information for fans as possible. Read up!

“No Classes, No Levels. We don’t want a game where the purpose of the game is to get to level 56 or 70 and then that is where the game starts… there is nothing like that. It is a skill based game. The whole point of the game is discovering new skills, basically like putting together a deck of cards that you can play any way you want to play.”

Tomorrow expects to see the release of whatever information was uncovered from GDC 2009 about Funcom’s next MMORPG, The Secret World. In the meantime, the anticipation builds in the official TSW forum. It began with a warning that dark days are coming once again.

The hour has arrived. No more pretenders. We are gathering. Quietly. Secretly. Dark days are coming and the fate of this world is at stake.

The Secret World fans are very clever, and instantly began to unravel the mysteries behind the lone post. It wasn’t long before a very creepy video was uncovered, along with some Twittering from from Funcom’s Ragnar Tornquist.

People continued to dig and analyze until a new website was found, more pieces to a puzzle. Every shred of evidence has been ripped apart. Some who solve the mysteries appear to receive a key of sorts, to where it leads no one knows yet.

Follow the thread in the official forum, look at the evidence for yourself!

Funcom is ready to reveal more about their next MMORPG, The Secret World, at GDC later in March. In a 2008 financial report, Funcom stated plans to start pimping up TSW early in 2009, guess they are sticking to it! Hopefully we can look forward to some new media and plenty of news coming out of the event!

Ragnar Tornquist, Game Director for Funcom’s The Secret World, has updated his blog, in which he mentions a few little TSW tidbits. In the first blog post Ragnar mentions investing most of the next four weeks into The Secret World, stating that they have recently made some “Big Changes” to the game. While the story remains the same, the gameplay is going through a redesign… for the better apparently.

We want The Secret World to stand out and be remembered – obviously. To not be just another MMORPG, a WoW clone, of which there are already too many. We’re going to play up the strengths of our universe and differentiate ourselves in both the setting and the gameplay – and particularly in how players can become exactly who they want to be, their secret selves, both visually and in terms of powers. Everyday adventurers and superheroes; guardians of the secret world; champions of Gaia. Warriors. Explorers. Cryptologists. Cryptozoologists. Mystics. Magi. Demonologists. Storytellers. Historians. Travellers. Lovers.

In his second blog post, Ragnar talks about his surprise at how quickly the press picked up on his latest ramblings; and how some twisted his words up a fair chunk.

It is nice to see The Secret World grabbing some headlines again, and though ambiguity can easily lead to speculation – “sweeping changes” and “back to the drawing board” may be taking it a tad too far; we haven’t tossed all of our original design documents, far from it – we appreciate the fact that people are intrigued by what we’re working on…

And just because we’re not talking much about the game at this point doesn’t mean there’s no game, or that we’re going to take longer than planned to finish the game – it just means that we want to wait a little longer before we reveal our deepest, darkest secrets to you (yes, even you, faithful followers, although you will be the first to know – the reveal will, hopefully, begin here). Another year? No, certainly not.