We've heard rumors and tales about the game for years, now we've finally taken a look inside. What have we found? Read on to find out!

If there’s one thing people can say about Funcom, it’s that they know how to get people excited for their games. Starting with Anarchy Online and moving to Age of Conan, the developers at Funcom have blown people away with their innovative takes on standard MMO systems, from the invention of instancing in AO to the more agile combat system found in Age of Conan. Again, the team is setting its sights high, this time by taking on a genre that hasn’t really seen the light of day in the MMO industry.

Specifically, we’re talking about the modern horror genre, a venue that’s seen more than its fair share of popularity in the last few years. From TV to movies, you can’t seem to flip a channel or take in a movie without seeing a werewolf, zombie, vampire, Cthullu monster or modern magical beasty. Although MMO companies are probably scrambling to put a team together to get a product out the door, Funcom seems to have gotten the timing right and they’re perched at the doorstep to supernatural success with their upcoming MMO, The Secret World.

Players have known about The Secret World for years, but game details have been incredibly scarce, with the amount of information available remaining about as rare and…mysterious as... the name of the game itself. While there was a small reveal at last year’s Game Developers Conference, the 2010 version of the show gave the gathered media a real chance to see the game in action and learn the direction in which the Funcom developers and the game’s director, Ragnar Tørnquist, are taking the title.

To start, let’s talk about the basics. Unlike most modern MMOs, The Secret World is running a classless system of advancement. Now this doesn’t mean we’re heading back to the days of Ultima Online or adopting a Darkfall skill-up system. Instead, as players advance their characters they will have the opportunity to purchase active and passive abilities that allow the character to perform functions that the players are familiar with in other games.

In the demo the ZAM team witnessed, a three person group encountered a variety of different monsters (the majority of which you can see pictures of in our gallery). One of those characters – the one the camera point-of-view was centered on – was an obvious DPSer with loads of fire-blasting abilities, like a single target fireblast, a cone of flame, and some sort of flaming sword technique that slashed at enemies close to the spellcaster.