What is planned ahead after 1.4

What we can expect in the next few months:

• Tattooes
  "We still want to do tattoos and we are working on it. We hope to release it in one of the upcoming updates, but we don’t know exactly when."
• Raid Lair boss
  "That’s also being worked on and it will be coming into a future update, though we haven’t locked exactly which one. We know people are eager for this and we’re trying to put it out there as soon as possible. Of course, game development – even after launch – is a game of priorities and right now there are a few other things we need to wrap up first."
• Third auxiliary weapon
  "We’re not quite ready to reveal that yet, but I’ll give you one exclusive hint: it involves physics."
• Event for the Winter solstice
  "We don’t really want to talk about these events until we are certain what is going to be in them. I think the team did a very good job with the Halloween event, and we did add a lot of good, new content for that specifically. We didn’t just throw in a few pumpkins and costumes, we built an entire new area (Stonehenge) and introduced a full storyline to really keep people entertained. Hopefully we can do something as elaborate as that for upcoming seasons as well."

What we can expect for the first semester of 2013:

• New area: Tokyo
  "[In size,] it should be comparable to any of the large regions – Shadowy Forest or Savage Coast for example. It’s going to be a very complex region, with a lot of nooks and crannies to explore. For the team it’s an incredibly challenging region to build because of the sheer size and the amount of detail going into it.
  The Tokyo region will contain both a lair and a dungeon. I can’t really reveal the details about these yet, but we’re definitely working on some cool stuff. We’re drawing upon a lot of myths and stories from Japanese culture and bringing that to life in our version of Tokyo. Especially in terms of monsters, players can look forward to stand face to face with creatures that have become quite familiar during the past few years through the increasingly popular Japanese horror movies.
  We’re aiming for ‘end game’ difficulty. It’s definitely supposed to be challenging to players, even the most experienced ones. But equally as rewarding!"
• Season 2 of The Secret World
  "A season is a storyline that ends and sums itself up, and then it creates new plot threads for a new storyline. It should definitely have a rewarding end at the same time as it creates new questions that you want to see answered in the following season. Just like any good TV show, really! We want you to feel rewarded when the first season ends at the same time as you can’t even wait for the second one to start – if we manage to capture that feeling then I think our vision has been realized.
  [Seasons] should contain many different storyline threads. For example the first storyline contains three major threads (one for each region) and then one overarching thread. Player can definitely expect something similar in upcoming seasons."

What we can expect later:

• Housing
  "We’re working on some designs internally, but nothing has gone into production yet. We know this is something a lot of people are asking for and it’s a natural post-launch addition to any MMO, so we’ve started looking at how we can bring that into The Secret World without putting too much strain on our resources. We have one of our most experienced designers working on a few ideas now and I definitely think we will be able to add a good housing system at one point in the future. But it’s far too early to say when that may be."
• PvP dungeon
  "Our first priority is improving on our existing PvP, and we’re actually introducing quite a few of these improvements in Issue #4. We’re adding a fresh reward system, new PvP vendors and several new missions in the Fusang warzone. The new features take balance into careful consideration and give the conflict both meaning and persistence. I’m personally very eager to do a PvP dungeon as well and we’ll definitely get around to doing that in a future update."
• Expansions?
  "That depends on a lot of factors. We remain committed to delivering solid updates on a regular basis and we’re seeing that our players really appreciate the opportunity to explore new content and mechanics on a regular basis, so right now we’re focusing on cranking those updates out and we have a pretty ambitious launch plan for that going forward. We’re definitely not ruling out expansions though, but right now our priority is to provide our players with quality content on a regular basis instead of an expansion drop every two or third years."