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In The Secret World, characters have access to a variety of weapons and skills in each of the three main ability wheels: firearms, magic and melee. In firearms, you can equip a pistol, shotgun or assault rifle. Casters can use Elementalism, Chaos and Blood magics, and melee-oriented toons can wield swords, hammers and fist weapons.

Each playable character can equip two different weapons, allowing you to build your complement of active and passive abilities from two different skill trees. For example, you may be wielding Blood Magic and a shotgun, or a pistol in one hand and a fist weapon in the other. The trick is to find the abilities in the skill wheels for each weapon type that most work in harmony with the others.

To help simplify your choices, the game offers “Decks,” pre-selected abilities in a character specialization that you can choose to follow. These Decks are unique to each of the three secret societies, meaning that the Neoshaman Deck available to those of the Dragon won’t be selectable by someone who choose to follow the Illuminati. Each Deck performs a certain role, whether that’s tanking for a group, healing allies, or dishing out huge amounts of pain.

Curious to see more? Check out the official Secret World website where you can pre-purchase the game for guaranteed beta access. Funcom plans to release The Secret World on July 3, 2012.