Game Director Joel Bylos releases his latest director's letter.

The Secret World released it's September Director's Letter today, the latest in a continuing series of updates by creative director, Joel Bylos. The missive begins by recapping the events of the last month before moving into what's in store for October and beyond.

In September, the game saw the introduction of The Gilded Rage, a gold themed event which Bylos describes as “a great success.” This update also paved the way for their next, The Whispering Tide. This event is active on live servers now and tasks snazzily dressed adventurers with fighting back the Filth that seeks to invade Agartha. Players can also upgrade the Custodian faction to open up further pathways into the heart of the Filth invasion. The Whispering Tide is said to be a long-term event lasting until the release of Issue #9 and the opening of the Tokyo region.

To celebrate the Halloween season, Funcom will be releasing a series of missions they title “Stories From Soloman Island” as well as bringing back the Cat God event from last year. These missions will see players completing the unfinished book of Urban Legends begun by the League of Monster Slayers. To succeed, they must return to Soloman Island, the first open-world zone in the game, and investigate the legitimacy of its citizen’s scary stories.

Bylos also reports that work on Issue #8 has moved into internal testing. New scenarios, The Secret World’s random event system, are being balanced for solo, duo and group sizes, as well as nightmare modes for each. Interestingly, the difficulty level is planned to impact the time of day for each scenario. Normal modes are planned to take place at mid-afternoon and nightmare taking place at midnight. The upcoming Augment system is also up for discussion later this month.

Development on the upcoming Tokyo region moving forward at full steam. Voice acting is currently being recorded and missions are being designed and tested. For the first time since launch, this update will take up the game’s main story thread and progress it forward. Expect to see some familiar faces, and voices, on the journey.

Issue #8 is “coming soon” with Issue #9 to arrive in the following months.

Chris "Syeric" Coke

Follow him on Twitter: @GameByNight