I'm really happy and excited to announce the first public beta of a shiny new feature we've been working on (in total secrecy!) for the past couple of months:

Chronicle.

Chronicle is a record -- a chronicle! -- of your character's journey through the secret world, and includes a character profile together with a collection of leaderboards covering both PvE and PvP.

We're launching our first public beta phase today, and everyone's invited! The service will remain in beta for the time being and contain a limited set of features, but Chronicle will continue to expand and grow together with our community and the game.

Chronicle allows you to look up character profiles on the net and, crucially, to size your character up against other players, everywhere. You can compare base profiles, and you can look up your friends and fellow cabalists and members of your secret society on the leaderboards to see who's ahead in what.

On your profile page, you can see a selection of your stats -- such as ability wheel completion, your weapon and talisman skills, equipped actives and passives, and talismans, deck completion, faction rank, cabal, and a bunch of other achievements and stats. Your profile is currently updated once every twenty-four hours.

On the leaderboards, you will be compared with players from across the world. We cap the lists at a low number, so you might not feature on all -- or any! -- of the leaderboards right now, but it will give you something to strive for, whether it's to compare yourself with friends and teammates, cabal members, your faction...or everyone. Hey, aim high! Think of the leaderboards as good, old-fashioned high-score lists.

Please note that your character must have been active within the past four days for the service to be activated. If you are having trouble finding your character, log into the game and log back out -- your character should now be updated on Chronicle.

This is just the beginning for Chronicle. We have a lot of great features planned, and we will be integrating the service more with the game and also, hopefully, with mobile devices and social networks in the future. We are going to add more stats, more features, more leaderboards, and more user control. We might also look at giving rewards tied to your status and standing on Chronicle.

This is still the first public beta phase for Chronicle, but we're making it accessible to everyone so that we can get your feedback and comments, and to allow you to start building your status and profile in The Secret World -- or to put it another way:

Start working on your own personal Chronicle!

Let us know what you think, and hopefully together we can shape Chronicle into an even better service as time goes on -- one that complements and enhances your enjoyment of the game, and your immersion into The Secret World.

Have fun, everyone!

Ragnar